189. Beatle

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

We are in Steve’s car driving along Maxwell Ave, to his friend, Beatle’s place. Traffic is slow.

“Time passes much quicker in the morning than any other.”

“That’s probably because you take Ossi out first thing.”

“I put out the breakfast dishes first then take him out between seven and eight.”

“It’s barely light at that time.”

“Yes, Terriers are crepuscular, you know.”

“That’s a good hour’s runaround!”

“It is. While we are out, bel prepares our fruit and oatmeal, tea for me, and coffee for her. I put down Ossi’s chow when I get back.”

“Doesn’t bel feed him at all?”

“She doesn’t do that much in the mornings since we lost Josephine.”

“Bel was deeply attached to that cat.”

“So true, Fred.  She feeds Ossi in the evenings, with a little pumpkin for dessert.”

“Enjoys his vege does he?”

“It keeps him regular, and he never leaves an atom in the dish.”

“Dogs have highly efficient tongues.”

“I am more active in the mornings. Emptying the dehumidifiers, taking trash out, and so on, and that is where some of the time goes.  But time races by while we read the papers.”

“I imagine you read the New York Times, which is way too long for me.”

“Yup, and the Post and Financial Times.”

“That lot could take all day and all night!”

“Bel reads the FT, and I like the Times and we both read different parts of the Post.”

We stop beside a white Tesla, with a golden retriever looking back at us from the open passenger’s side window.

“That dog looks like it wants to chat.”

Steve opens his window, and the dog pulls back and looks away.

“Only with other dogs!”

We move forward a few car lengths.

“It is nothing but red lights along here!”

“They are always red if you are in a hurry!”

“Yes, are we running late?”

“Beatle doesn’t take much notice of the time.”

“You can’t be too careful.  People are running lights more and more often.”

“I had someone go around me to run this light up here.”

Traffic is backing up in the oncoming lane behind a bus letting off passengers.

“Stay there, buddy!”

“He looked like he was going to make a run for it!”

We stopped at the next red light.

“It would be fun to hear some of the Beatle’s old hits.”

“No, it is not the band. He was always tinkering with his VW.”

“You don’t see many of those old Bugs now.”

“He has a really old one with the split rear window.”

“From the fifties?”

“He would know.”

“You’ve made no mention of a wife or partner. Is he married?”

“Yes, several times and none of them could stand him for long.”

“So, he is by himself now.”

“Yeah, pretty much.  His second wife, Natalya comes by, once in a while.”

“What about number three?”

“No way, that third marriage ended in violence after less than a year!”

“How ghastly, did he hurt her badly?”

“No, she gave him a concussion and cracked a couple of ribs with a sock full of ball bearings.”

“Interesting weapon!”

“Beatle keeps it under his pillow in case of an intruder.”

The white VW Atlas ahead turns off to the right through a yellow light.

“An indicator would have been nice!”

“Probably on the phone.”

“Okay, we take the next one.”

The light has turned red at the intersection of Maxwell Ave and a broken street sign indicating Beatle’s unreadable address.

“So, what is your history with this, ‘Beatle’?”

“We are in a Listening Group.”

“What is that?”

“Comparing and contrasting different recordings.”

“Oh, are you all musicians?”

“There are only three of us, now.  The other two are musicians, I am not, as you know.”

Steve parks in front of a small square bungalow with white shutters at the windows. Next door, two long narrow townhouses are in the last stages of construction.  

“Look at those identical twins, Steve!”

“They call it, ‘infill’. It provides more housing”

“Yes, and each house will add at least two more vehicles to the streets.”

“Not just vehicles, huge late-model SUVs.”

We get out of the car and look around.

“There are always a few midsized electric cars like that Prius over there.”

“Steve, this area is nearly gridlocked already!”

“That’s growth for you!”

“Look at those new places down there. The neighborhood is getting horribly gentrified.”

“That’s prosperity for you!”

“Why do they have to ruin our nice old community with all this?”

“Don’t be a NIMBY, Fred.”

We can see a red, white, and blue Macadamia sign on the grass behind the rail fence across Beatle’s front yard.”

“Look at that, Fred!”

“It is one of those LED signs.”

“I didn’t know they made garden variety electronic signs.”

“Isn’t that a small version of that program of images at the Hadron Shopping Center?”

“Sure, looks like it.”

“There’s Macadamia dancing to The Village People’s YMCA!”

“I wonder if he knows that was a gay group?”

Several broken rails have fallen at odd angles to their posts. One end is attached crudely to a gate post with baling wire.  A large white oak branch has fallen near Beatle’s black VW, parked in the driveway.  Twigs full of dead leaves are scattered over the car. We walk up the short leaf-strewn front path to the portico.

“He has been in this house more than thirty years.”

“It looks like he needs to get a paint job.”

White paint peels off the door frame.

Steve turns the doorknob, and we go into the small living room filled with a baby grand piano. An easy chair in the corner is piled with sheet music.

“Beatle!”

Steve looks around.  There is no sign of him.

“This room feels kind of bare.  No carpet, nothing on the walls, no curtains.”

“I know, Fred. He is all ears in here.”

“Beatle, it’s Steve. I have brought my neighbor Fred.”

“Down here. Come on down here!”

It is a faint sound.

“Oh, he is in the club room.”

Steve leads the way through the kitchen with one old percolater coffee pot on each side of the sink, which is full of unwashed mugs.

“Help yourself to coffee from the pot on the right.”

“Thanks, Beatle, we are all coffeed out.”

“The milk in the fridge is sour.”

We go down to the basement by steep stairs made narrow by the stair lift.  The path to Beatle’s chair is warn deep into the light brown shag carpet. 

“Beatle! How are you?”

He is a short barrel-shaped man with a graying ginger beard and thin hair. He doesn’t look up, adjusting the controls on his stereo preamp.  He waves his headphones held in his right hand.

“Hi Steve, Hi Steve’s friend.’

“This is Fred.”

“Fred, pull up a seat anywhere you can find one.”

The far wall supports shelves loaded with LPs from floor to ceiling.  There’s a row of old steel ammunition boxes on the floor in front. The wall behind him holds books, with more piled up on the floor.  Looks like a small window has been blocked with a warped unpainted plywood rectangle, fastened with peeling gray duct tape. 

Beatle backs up and sits slowly in his corduroy recliner. His headphones now hang off one wrist stretched out over the arm of his chair.

We step carefully around Beatle’s feet on the extended recliner to take identical brown leather barrel chairs, facing him. They are badly torn along the sides.  The cushions are timeworn with faded hollows in the seat.

He notices me looking at the ragged chairs.

“My first wife’s cat tore that up. I told her the cat’s got to go.  So, the bitch left with her cat the next day!”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t waste your sorrow on me, Fred!”

“Fine, I am abstemious by nature!”

Beatle puts his headphones around his neck and picks up an iPad from a small round table beside him, knocking his coffee mug on the floor.

“Has that damn thing spilled?”

“No, Beatle it is empty.”

“Alright Steve, I’ll get another mug when Boyd gets here.”

“Would that be Boyd Nightingale?”

“Yeah, you know him, Fred?”

“Not well, but yes.”

“He’s a sweet kid. I am educating him in classical music and the dangers of female entanglements.”

Beatle taps his iPad.

“Did you load all your recorded music on that iPad?”

“No, Fred, this is the controller.  The music is on a separate hard drive downloaded from my CDs in those ammo boxes and online.”

I get up to get his coffee mug.

“Leave it. Get it later.”

“What were we listening to, Steve?”

“Oh! Is this going to be a listening session?”

“What else is there to do, Fred? Argue about politics?”

“Anything but that!”

“Let’s do the Brahms string sextet that was interrupted last time?”

“Okay Steve, that’s number two in G, opus 36. Played by Harriet Krijgh & Friends.”

Beatle taps his iPad and the opening floats out of his old Klipsch horn speakers standing to the left of his stereo.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVKwCjZ_zUQ)

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188. The All-Natural Patio

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Four new brown Adirondack chairs are arranged on a bed of mulch in the shade of the crabapple tree behind Diddlie’s carport. A laurel bush, two hydrangeas and a serviceberry, will partly screen them from the street, until fall. 

Diddlie comes out of her kitchen door walking towards me.

“Hi Fred, have you come over to try out my new chairs?”

“Ah, I didn’t know you had them.”

“So, what did you come over for?”

“I saw Lou working back here as I walked by the carport and thought I would check on our lunch date, Wednesday.”

“You mean you didn’t come on my property to see me at all?”

“Diddlie, I am always glad to see you.”

“Well, that’s more like it!”

We walk over to the new chairs.

“See, no paving, just mulch.”

“Well done, let the rain soak in.”

Lou looks up as he takes off his gloves and throws them into the empty wheelbarrow, recently full of mulch. “She has an ‘all-natural’ patio’!

Diddlie is holding the chair info sheet she pulled from the pile of cardboard flatpack the chairs came in.

“Fred, these chairs are made of high-density polyethylene.”

“All natural, Lou?”

“No Fred, the mulch and shade are.”

“True enough, no umbrellas no awning.” 

Lou brushes some mulch off his jeans. “Natural shade for this famous fake wood!”

Two crows fly over us spreading their caws to anyone with ears.  They settle in a willow oak next door, in Jake Trips’ yard, keeping up a low-pitched commentary among themselves.

Diddlie gathers some mulch from the lawn with the side of her pink and yellow SnazE ‘SuperFlex’ slip-on walking shoe. “It hasn’t rained for over a month.”

Lou pushes the wheelbarrow out of the way of the chairs. “We got a few drops last week”

“Right, enough to wet dry leaves and soak my jeans when I brushed past the hydrangea on the way to my compost heap.”

Lou is still trying to get the last of the mulch off his jeans.”

“It often rains all around us, but not here.”

“I know, it is the ‘DC Distortion Zone’.”

“What is that, Fred?”

“Political pressure.” 

“Is that barometric?”

“Only if you have a political barometer.”

Diddlie folds up her info sheet.

“I saw one for sale online!”

“How much Did.?”

“I think the subscription was thirty bucks a month with exclusives!”

“Did you buy it?”

“No, I don’t have time to read that stuff.”

“Look, even the violet’s leaves are drying out and floppy and folded over.”  

Diddlie contemplates her new chairs.

A jet passes over. Its roar changes pitch to a whistle as it descends toward Calvin Coolidge National Airport.  The crows fly off and the disturbance subsides.

Lou’s yellow DeWalt drill with Phillips head screwdriver lies on the wide arm of a chair.

“You up for lunch, Fred?”

“I thought it was tomorrow.”

“It was. You got time today?”

Diddlie pulls on Lou’s sleeve but looks at me.

“Why don’t you guys try out my new chairs?”

Lou picks up his drill and shows me the magnetized Philips head as he wipes off some metal particles. “I don’t know what those screws were made of, but they must have a little ferric materiel in them.”

“It might be zinc.  That’s what my patio screen is fastened with.”

Lou puts it in the wheelbarrow on top of his gloves. 

“The last part of that chair job required three hands.”

“Lou, I told you I could help.”

“Diddlie, you were making bird bread for the parrot, remember?”

“Well, the Red Queen’s food was running low.”

“Anyway, I don’t know anyone with more than two hands.”

“Okay Lou, I am sorry, okay?”

“No problem Diddlie.”

“I am trying to balance Queenie’s diet with more legumes.” 

“This sun still has plenty of heat in it.”

We sit down in the mottled shade.  A leaf shadow plays on Diddlie’s face opposite me and her eyes appear to flash.

“So, am I invited to this lunch of yours?”

Lou looks at me and I at him.

“Oh, my! Gentlemen, is this decision so hard?”

“We are still discussing which day, Did.”

“Well, okay Fred, I am buying for the guy who assembled my chairs.”

“So, have you got time today, like about now?”

“Sure, Lou.”

“Diddlie, how about you?”

“Oh, I have plenty of time, today or tomorrow.”

Lou gets up and grabs the wheelbarrow handles but turns back to us. “I need to shower first.”

“Okay, Fred and I will meet you down at the H bar in a while.”

“Give me half an hour.”

He takes the barrow back to the carport.

“Fred, you are sitting on old milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles and other trash.”

“What a nightmare!”

“What do you mean it isn’t in a landfill, at least!”

“We need to stop making that stuff.”

Diddlie, looks up into the trees, saying nothing.  High clouds obscure the sun and the radiant heat ceases as if it had been switched off.

“Fred.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like my new chairs?”

“Yes, very comfortable.”

“Don’t you like the backs high enough to rest your head against?”

I lean back to enjoy the benefit and close my eyes hearing the faint sound of a distant gas-powered lawnmower.

“Ah, Fred, have I put you to sleep?”

“No, your new chair might, if it quiets down around here.”

“Okay, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Diddlie watches a crow on the power lines as it makes three calls.  

There’s a passing buzz in my ear and open my eyes to see a visiting yellow jacket on my knee.  Then I brush something off my head.  Diddlie yells and gets up slapping her neck.

“I am getting stung!”

She runs toward the house, and I follow, getting stung on my wrist by the one I tried to brush off.

We stand in the kitchen looking through the protective screen door.

“Vote candy, eat dates”

The Red Queen calls from the living room.

“Is she doing political commentary, now?”

“I don’t know where she got that from.”

“Polly ticks Polly Tocks”

“She is into timing, that’s my guess.”

“Relate, debate, candy vote dates.”

A yellow jacket crawls up the screen with its striped pointed back dragging in the gaps.

“There must be a nest by the chairs somewhere.”

“They probably enjoy the fallen apples, Fred.”

“What took them so long to come after us?”

“Maybe they were buried in mulch.”

Diddlie turns away and soon returns with a spray bottle of Windex and sprays the insect which falls away in the ammonia fumes.

“That takes care of one of those little stingers!”

She stands pressing against me with her finger on the bottle trigger.”

“Look at those things, Fred!”

Large black-backed bees are climbing in and out of the roses of Sharon’s violet bells over by the compost heap.

“Those are carpenter bees.”

“Well, I don’t want to get stung by one of those monsters!”

“They didn’t sting us. I think they are on a mission.”

“I know Fred, it was wasps but look at the size of those things!”

“Did, your HDPE chairs are safe!”

“I know, they only drill into wood.”

“Let’s get going Did.”

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187. Of Books and Batteries

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

I find Daisy sitting in the Pie Shop with her old friend Val Eliot. Val’s black-framed glasses have rounded rectangles like old TV screens.  Wavey black hair hangs down the side of her face. Val holds a piece of plastic-coated card.  Her laptop is on the table in front of her—Daisy waves to me and gestures towards a vacant seat at their table.

“What is that thing?”

“Val, do you remember Fred?”

“Hi Fred, this is a wrapper that cannot be opened.”

“Yes, it’s a big trend in retail.”

Val turns it over in her hands.

“A small thing imprisoned in a transparent plastic blister on this big piece of thin cardboard stock.”

“A Universal Serial Bus, or USB.”

“You are quite the techy, Daisy.”

“I read that on the package, Fred, while we were browsing in SnazE. It’s the interface,  basically a flash drive.”

“Is that printed there too?”

Val shows me the back of the rectangle where the information is printed.

“I am going to put my stock list and passwords, and stuff on it.”

Val is scrutinizing the card, still searching for a way to open it.

“Aren’t they already protected on your computer?”

“This is backup, Fred, and there are some I just keep in my head, which also needs backup.”

“I get that. You will probably need a pair of scissors to free your drive.”

“Do you have a pair, Fred?”

“No, not on me.”

“I’ll go ask at the counter.” Daisy gets up and walks over to the barista, who is waiting for customers.

Val hands me the imprisoned object of her attention.

“Do you see any secret access point?”

I look at the back for a dotted line indicated by an ‘open here’ instruction.

“No, I don’t. This thing is serving a life sentence.”

“Right, and how many thousand years does plastic last?”

“Who knows?”

“Obviously, I can’t wait it out!”

“No, it devolves into nano and microplastics which are now everywhere.”

“Devo!”

“I saw a bumper sticker the other day saying, ‘Devo was right’.”

Daisy returns without scissors.

“They don’t serve customers with scissors.”

“We don’t have any scissors!”

“I know Val, I mean they do not have any for loan.”

“Not even something with a little flavoring? Vanilla or spearmint, say?”

“Val, who ever heard of flavored scissors?  Besides, no flavor will free that thing!”

“Think of scented handles, Daisy. Surely, they have loose catnip!”

“Why should they?”

“Because they have a cat.  I saw a tabby in the back when the cashier went through the swing door.”

“Wow! That might have been ‘Sfumato’.  She used to hang out in Arty Bliemischt’s studio, right above here.”

I shake my head, “Sfumato was a tortoiseshell, not a tabby.”

“Oh! right Fred, Didn’t Arty take her when she moved out?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Anyway, if they have catnip, I am sure it is only for cats.”

“Val, you mean if a cat came in here, they would serve the feline with a nip?”

“Mrs. Rutherford would, Val.  The barista referred me to their website.”

“Oh! Right, some corporate concoction, thousands of words of legalese covering every possible sort of liability in relation to Felis catus.”

“Cactus, what that got to do with it?”

“No, ‘Catus’, not cactus, it’s a legal document, and therefore larded with Latin!”

Val sips her mint tea. “I remember Mrs. Rutherford from my last visit. Where is she when we need her?”

Daisy drains her coffee and the bracelets on her right arm cascade from her wrist to her elbow. “She left after the place was bought out by Jake Trip.”

“She would have provided scissors!”

“No doubt, Val.”

“Now this is corporate-owned.”

“And ruled, Val. They knocked the word ‘Cavendish’ off the name.  Now it is just, ‘The Pie Shop’.”

Daisy folds her arms on the table. The bracelets rattle on the top catching a sunbeam coming in under the awning, which is only halfway down. “They might at least have called it the ‘Fauxmont Pie Shop’!”

“Well, nobody used the full name of the place.  When did you last hear anyone refer to the ‘Cavendish Pie Shop’?”

“Can’t remember, Fred, but the name over the door was unique.”

“True, how many coffee shops are named after a Lab?”

“There might be one in Cambridge, Fred.”

“Yes, that’s where Henry Cavendish discovered hydrogen back in the eighteenth century.  He called it inflammable air.”

“Well, they might have changed the name to, “Henry’s Place” with an explanatory plaque!”

“Fred, why don’t you suggest that to the management?”

“Ha, ha, ha, as if they would listen to me!”

Val has used a thin flat key from her crowded ring to force a small separation between the plastic and the card.  She holds up the key.

“The key to this prison. Here we go!”

She is pressing the key further in between the two layers.

“At this rate, you won’t get the thing out until after Christmas!”

“Okay, Daisy, have you got a pocketknife?”

“Here, try one of these plastic knives.

I hand her my plastic knife, unneeded, for my Blueberry Extravaganzo, advertised as ‘The best muffin experience on the Eastern Seaboard’.”

Val tries to press the blade into the gap she has made, and it snaps.

“Okay! Look at that.”

“Good one Val, the sharp end ought to finish the job.”

“It is probably going to break off!”

It does.

“Alright, now there is enough of a flap to pull apart.”

She grasps the small newly separated pieces and starts pulling them apart. The cardboard tears off just short of her objective in the plastic blister.

“Here, try this.”

The barista puts a paring knife on the table.

“Well, thanks!”

Val eases the blade towards her imprisoned thumb drive and twists it gently, making a gap wide enough for it to drop onto the table.

“Good tool!”

She hands him the knife.  He walks back to his counter.

“Now I need to load all my customers on here.” 

She starts up the computer and plugs the drive into the side.

“This thing needs more juice!”

Val pulls a small battery with a solar panel, from her bag.

“Here’s a recharge!”  She plugs the cable from the battery into the second port on the side of her MacBook Air.

“What kind of service do you provide?”

“Fred, it is a store in Western Massachusetts, called “Factotum Books”, and we have a sideline in self-publishing.”

“That sounds like a tough business!”

“It is. We have not made a profit since we opened in 2013.”

“How do you stay afloat in the internet age?”

“My partner was a wealthy doctor at Mass General, and she left us an endowment when she died in 2019.”

“That qualifies as a minor miracle!”

“Indeed, doc assured that we will always have the best of literature in English and selected translations on the shelf.”

“The best in who’s judgement?”

“Hers!”

“Do you agree with it?”

“Mainly, but I have my doubts about the list being relevant to the next generation.”

“Well, as long as literature is taught in colleges and schools, there should be a demand.”

“That changes over time, though.”

“So, what does Factotum publish?”

“We specialize in local writers, a couple of poets, a romance novelist, and our best seller is a guide to native herbs and mushrooms in the locality.”

“Yeah, I would buy that!”

“Doc was shocked when she found her nephew had graduated in English from Prestige University, right here, without ever reading a book.”

“That is absurd!”

“Fred, he just read study guides online to write his papers, and memorized for tests, and that was it.”

“With ChatGPT he wouldn’t even have to write!”

Daisy puts a hand on Val’s arm.

“Did he learn anything?”

“Yeah, he is a competent techy and an expert at online searches.  He can also manage the store when I am away.” Val sips some more mint tea. “He is also the store’s only other employee.”

Daisy takes her hand off Val’s arm and her bracelets rattle on the table.

“Val, what about the human part of the so-called humanities?”

“Taylor Swift seems to be a good source.”

“Okay, I mean the pleasure of reading.  I have always been a painter, but reading has kept me sane at times.”

“Like what?”

“Like, Mark Twain, you know, ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.’”

“Well, there isn’t anyone like Mark Twain.”

“Ain’t that the truth!”

“My nephew listens to podcasts and reads a lot online.”

“No, I mean imaginative reading.  Like reading Jane Austin or Herman Melville.”

“Daisy, dear Daisy!  Those dusty old tomes are not part of his world.”

“He had to study them I hope.”

“Sure, as I just explained, that was just a necessary hassle.”

“You mean the novels didn’t tell him anything?”

“Right, it is all in an eightienth or nineteenth-century context.”

I scrunch up the paper my muffin came in.  “Well, PU didn’t do its job!”

“Look, Fred, the so-called humanities have been screwed up!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it is all about getting the degree, and the social status it confers.  I doubt if anyone is ever going to care what he knows about Mr. Darcy or events on the Pequod, for that matter.”

“How sad.”

“The sad part is that he doesn’t care either.” 

“Fred, I think you are right, but historically, how many people have ever read literature with a capital, L?”

“Okay, Val there is a certain amount of class and snobbery in all this, but there is more.”

“What? For instance.”

“Continuity, Val.”

“You mean tradition?”

“Yeah, it has been called the ‘main current.’

“Right Fred, flowing from batteries through circuit boards and amplifiers!”

Val leans back and takes off her glasses holding them in the air,“You might say literary books are cultural batteries.”

“Music, too, I mean recordings.”

“Right Daisy, you need the right connector to get plugged in, though.”

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186. Under the Ashes

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Even the cicadas are silent. There aren’t many in this year’s summer heat, which is more like a flood that a wave. A few of their finger-sized holes can be seen in the dry clay path we follow, passing by the remains of that old mansion, The Ashes.”

“It’s amazing to think that ruin includes the whole hilltop in its estate.”

“Fred, it is amazing to think this lot has not been subdivided.”

“Where are all the ash trees?” 

“The emerald ash borer wiped them out around here.

“There is something else very strange going on, though!”

“Like insects?”

“Ah, no, I was up here, back in 2016, with Diddlie. We were looking for Mr. Liddell.”

“Who brought him up here?”

“She said he had escaped up here before, so this is where we looked.”

“That’s right, she said something about it to me.”

“Anyway, we got separated, because she started gathering flowers especially goldenrod.”

“Yeah, she’s been doing that ever since I’ve known her.”

“I looked into that old garage.”

”I know, it seems to be in good condition.”

“Found Rank Majors in there, working on a vehicle.”

“Rank! what he was doing there?”

“Lou, I have never mentioned this to anyone.”

“That was probably wise, where Rank is concerned.”

“Let me tell you. It is fitted out as a shop. He was working from the old grease pit.”

“Do you remember what make was the vehicle?”

“I don’t remember because he dropped a bolt or a wrench or something.”

“What has that got to do with it?

“The thing fell into the pit and then went down further! A big distraction.”

“What do you mean further?”

“Lou, I tell you, there is a big installation under here.”

“You mean, under our feet?”

“Possibly, I got disoriented down there.”

“So, you followed Rank down there?”

“No, I saw Mr. Liddell going down into the pit and went after him. I found a big server farm, isles and aisles of IT equipment on racks.”

“In the pit?”

“No, through a narrow metal door off the far end of the pit and down a lot more steps.”

“I have been in that garage, but this is news to me.”

“Yeah, a guy called Stan, stopped me.  At least his voice did. Didn’t see him at first, and when I did, I recognized him from when they dug the deep foundation for that place on the old Sloot lot.”

“Stan, huh?  Are you sure he was using ‘Stan’?”

“Certain, as I said, I had seen him before.”

“Fred, don’t talk about it to anyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have heard rumors and whispers about a subterranean installation here but never got confirmation like this.”

“Stan had not seen Mr. Liddell and didn’t know who Diddlie was.”

We have stopped in the shade of some juniper trees covered with wild grape vine.

“Someone screwed up, big time, if you got in there. I am sure of that.”

”So, what are you thinking, super-secret government stuff?”

“Could be organized crime.”

“Do you think I would have got out alive if that was it?”

“Who knows?”

“Diddlie told me it was dead people’s data.”

“How does she know?”

“She said she just figured it out herself.”


”So, she is aware of this too!”

“I don’t know. She didn’t seem surprised, though.”

“Buried corpses and buried data.  I guess it makes some kind of sense.”

“Come on Lou, spit it out! What is down there?”

“I honestly don’t know and don’t want to know.  Even criminals make mistakes.”

“Stan led me to a pull-down ladder, like you have for an attic.  I climbed up and through a hatch into a hallway with a small bedroom off it. It was over the mansion’s garage, I think, near the kitchen which is still intact.”

“Fred, this isn’t adding up!”

“No, it didn’t at the time.”

“Did you find the white rabbit?”

“Mr. Liddell was in the bedroom and ran off from under an eiderdown.”

“And Diddlie, where did she get to?”

“I found her in the kitchen arranging flowers.”

“That at least, does make sense because we use that kitchen for community parties on the lawn.”

“So, is it dead people’s data collected down there?”

“I doubt it.”

“What do you think it is?”


“Something the secret owner of this vacant lot wants to keep secret.”

“Well, the lot must be worth several million.”

High-pitched mosquitos make the only movement in the humid air, winging out of sight.

Lou smacks his ear and looks at his hand.

“Missed!”

“Those things feel your hand coming through the air.”

“Right, that’s why fly swatters are made of wire net.”

“So, what kind of net have we under here?”

“You know, I suspect the Leiden Organization may be mixed up in this.”

“Why Leiden Organization?”

“The Leiden Organization is now a loose cooperative of many different groups.”

“Yes, I read that they are involved with drug money.”

“They have huge government and corporate contracts, too.”

“Okay, so they can do all kinds of things!”

“Right Fred, but it is also very profitable.”

“Sure, think how the value of the Sloot house has gone up.”

“And that is just a minute part of the enterprise.”

“Who lives there now?”

“Westard North, I think, but he is not the owner.”

“Do you know who is?”

“The county record just shows, ‘de Geer Properties’.”

“That sounds familiar for some reason.”

“The same name is listed for the Trip house after he went bankrupt back in 2014.”

“That’s it.  I am told, Jake’s first wife was Margret Geer!”

“The marriage didn’t last long.’

“Was she an heiress or something?”

“I don’t know but the story is that he was very young and fell in love with an ‘older woman’.”

“The woman or her fortune?”

“No, I understand it was true love.”

“Like Emmanuel Macron!”

“There you are stranger things have happened!”

“So, if de Geer is a shell, it owns three properties, in Fauxmont, on whose behalf?”

“Well, let’s see, The Ashes estate, the old Sloot house, and Jake Trip’s house.”

“All those properties have exceptionally deep basements.” 

“I have found some other of mysterious connections.”

“Yes, this has the odor of The Leiden Organization, alright.”

“Ever heard of Van Rijn Estates?”

“Well of course, Paula Pocock used to live there with her mother.”

“They are part of the mix.”

“What do you mean, ‘the mix’?”

“When I was searching the county tax records and found de Geer Properties, I also found the Van Rijn Estate was sold to the developer by de Geer.”

“Who was the realtor?”

“Ahh, now I can’t think of it.  The name didn’t ring any bells.”

I walk on behind Lou through tall Japanese honeysuckle wound with a tangle of porcelain berry, green brier and wisteria reaching out at us with curling summer whips.  Lou is still fighting the mosquitos.

“We need some bug spray, Fred.”

“I’ll settle for a frost.”

“A frost in July? Not in this hemisphere.”

“We will be lucky to get any frost this Winter.”

“Don’t forget, global warming can bring big local variations in weather.”

“Yes, as circulation patterns vary with the heat.”

We have nearly cut through the vacant property, from Wickett Street down to Bails Lane.  Past a big patch of Joe Pye weed with bumblebees crowding on the chalky pink composite flowers.

“It was 96 Fahrenheit when I left the house.”

“It will be over a hundred today.”

“Mind that poison ivy!”

” Looks like blackberry.”

Lou tries to kick the stem out of the way, but it bounces back in front of us.

“I think they have cross pollinated.”

“Those thorns are persuasive!”

We plod on, out of the intermittent shade of the path, across the old lawn, where Fauxmont celebrates the Fourth of July with food and fireworks. The expanse of brown grass and green weeds with bald patches is diminishing under flourishing ivy, which spreads out from the far side.

“This heat is ridiculous. We should be wearing pith helmets and bush jackets.”

“Will I have to call you “Bwana”, Fred?”

“Only if we go back about a century.”

“Who’s idea was this safari?”

“Your’s, Lou, don’t you remember?”

“No, the heat has wiped my wet drive.”

“Racoons?”

“Oh right!  Diddlie is convinced that invading racoons are coming from up here somewhere.”
“You fixed her attic and eaves years ago!”

“She thinks they are frightening Mr. Liddell in the night.”

“Is he screaming or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, what is her story.”

“Fred, she is kind of incoherent on the subject.”

“We haven’t seen any spoor.”

“Not even a footprint in that soft ground by the dry pond.”

“I saw water in it a few years ago.”

“Yes, it was fed by a spring which stopped in the drought.”

“Like so many others around here.”

“The regional water table is dropping.”


We break through to Bails Lane, past a tall mature holly crowned with Virginia creeper.

“Fred, let’s go and cool off at the H bar.”

“Well, she said she would meet us at one o’clock.”

“Let’s be early, it is only twelve twenty-six.”

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185. Images of Success

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Steve Strether stands in the middle of Maxwell Avenue with Ossian sitting next to him.  There is no traffic at the moment, and the light is green. He pulls on Ossian’s leash, but the dog refuses to stand up as the harness moves up, tightening towards his ears.

“You better pick him up, Steve!”

“He will be a handful!”

“Trouble is heading toward you both!”

“I am hoping this light will turn red.”

A Metro bus approaches from the left and Ossian goes into a crouch.  The light turns red.

The bus stops with a hiss of breaks and Ossian rears up to attack.

“Here we go, Ossi.”

As Ossian is on his feet Steve pulls him towards me, waiting at the roadside.  Ossi stumbles along behind Steve, turning on the bus and growling every few steps.

“We didn’t get far this morning.”

“How long have you been at the intersection?”

“A few minutes, but it seems longer.”

“Pretty dangerous habit.”

“Well, yes, we spent about ten minutes hanging out by our gate waiting for something to happen.”

“Westies have their own agenda, I believe.”

“Ossian does.  Some mornings he is in a hurry and others he just waits for some action and won’t move on.”

Ossian sniffs my shoes, all signs of hostility gone. He puts his forepaws up on my knee for an ear-rub.

“Bel mentioned you are studying Frans Hals.”

“I don’t know about studying. I have been looking at Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Gentleman, in the National Gallery.”

“One of those old Dutch gents in a tall black hat and black doublet?”

“Yes, one of those! He lived and worked in Haarlem where the authorities of the time didn’t approve of religious painting, and this opened a market for his secular work.”

“Didn’t he paint ‘The Laughing Cavalier’?”

“He did, but the guy isn’t a cavalier.”

“How do you know?”

“They were soldiers. That man is a civilian.”

“Why is he called, The Laughing Cavalier?”

“Good question!”

“The expression isn’t so much a laugh as a grin.” 

“Right, or something coming before he breaks into a laugh.”

“Or something else.”

“Frans leaves us to guess.”

“That isn’t in the National Gallery, is it?”

“No, it is in London at the Wallace Collection.”

https://www.wallacecollection.org/explore/collection/search-the-collection/laughing-cavalier

“Well, I have seen reproductions on cookie tins, dish cloths, and mugs and even a covid mask.”

“He is a good salesman.”

“He is as flamboyant as a cavalier!”

“Hals was very good at getting the complexion of those wealthy, old, red-bearded guys.”

Ossian has stopped by a hydrant and sits looking up and down the street.

“Here we go again.”

“Or don’t go!”

Steve stands over him and pull up the harness, but Ossian won’t budge.

“Let’s give him a little time to hang out, Steve.”

“Sure.”

Steve steps back to join me in the shade of an ironwood tree growing along the fence by the hydrant.

“You know that painting was popular and made Hals’s name, in England, at least.”

“Which?”

“The so-called Cavalier who isn’t exactly laughing.”

“Isn’t it interesting how some works win popularity, and others don’t?”

“Just like now, it was the price that put it in the news.”

“Oh, did it go for millions?”

“The painting cost fifty thousand pounds which was huge in the 17th century.”

“Must be equivalent to at least three million now.”

“Oh, sure, and it would fetch multimillions today.”

“Do you think he is giving us a good-natured look or is he smirking at us from on high?”

“I think people tend to project something of themselves in reading his expression.”

“Probably, as we don’t know him, do we?”

“No, I haven’t found his name, but have not researched very far.”

“What aroused your interest in Hals?”

“A chance, really.”

“What do you mean?”
“I was looking at a book on Rembrandt by Simon Sharma where he mentions, “the first rule of Militia feast paintings” which Van Rijn had broken in painting, ‘The Night Watch’.”

“Which turned out to be daytime after cleaning, a while back!”

For me Fred, it will always be, ‘The Night Watch’, even if the night is just old varnish and dirt.”

“Have you been reading about Rembrandt too?”

“I often find the reproductions more interesting than the text, but Sharma is good.”

“Yes, okay, and Hals?”

“That phrase, ‘Militia feast paintings’, aroused me to look further.

“Did Hals do the customary thing?”

“Well, Frans followed tradition.  Take a look at ‘Banquet of the Officers of the St Hadrian Civic Guard.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frans-Hals_Banquet_of_the_Officers_of_the_St_Hadrian_Civic_Guard_Company_WGA11092.jpg

“Never seen it.”

“Well, I haven’t seen it, ‘in person’, but reproductions show twelve flamboyant officers in their best outfits, some seated, some standing around a table that looks too small for them all. They are looking in different directions trying to make an impression.”

“You make it sound chaotic.”

“I think it is, in a sense.”

“Maybe they are disputing politics after too many beers!”

“Each man is shown to advantage, it seems to me.”

“Is that customary?”

“It is.  Each officer is probably rendered with a good likeness with all the accouterments of his social and military position.”

“I remember Hals’s paint sometimes looks as if it just settled out of a cloud.”

“Yeah, Fred, brush strokes that might have floated down from a hawk attack!”

“It looks like it was put down quickly, don’t you think, Steve.”

“It does, but I think each stroke is carefully placed, the energy comes from his touch.”

“A feathery touch!”

Ossian is back in his crouch, watching a Golden Retriever’s approach, with tail waving behind her like a banner.

“Here comes one of his friends!”

“I think that is Pam Dirac holding the leash.”

This time Ossi leaps forward and greets his friend by jumping up to nip her ear.  He circles, to get a whiff off her hind parts. She places a heavy paw on his back and stops him. We humans exchange pleasantries while the dogs enjoy their brief reacquaintance.  Pam and her ‘golden’ walk back towards Maxwell Avenue and we walk on, up the steep slope of Oval Street.

“Steve, I haven’t seen her since her picture was all over “Backstairs” for winning Fauxmont chess championship.”

“What is “Backstairs?”

“Well, you know, it is our neighborhood news and gossip site!”

“I never go there, Fred.”

“She played in Derwent’s after-school chess club, years ago.”

“Yeah, I remember now. After that picture came out, Derwent Sloot never let anyone one forget it!”

“Imagine The Fauxmont Guild commissioning a painting of the Fauxmont Militia!”

“Sothey won’t be forgotten.”

“Yeah, Steve, and hang it at the Fauxmont Preschool, to inspire the youngsters.”

“I am doubtful about inspiring them with martial glory, Fred.”

“It could be a Fourth of July thing.”

“Why not a big photo?”

“Yes, or even a video!”

“The trouble is, Fred, our Militia don’t wear colorful outfits with sashes, helmets and swords, and all that.” 

“We have a different aesthetic. The Fauxmont Militia have 21st century tactical gear.”

“Yup, a lot of black and Camo.” 

“It might go on Instagram.”

“Yes, for younger audiences, but what about the ‘Geezer Audience’?”

“The over fifties?”

“Maybe, or the prematurely gray young aesthetic conservatives.”

“There’s always the nostalgics!”

“Let’s not forget the bald, Fred.”

“I may be bald, but I don’t accept ‘geezerhood’.”

“I think our militiamen should be standing in and around an armored vehicle.

Possibly a Hummer ‘surplused’ from the desert operations of the oil wars.”

“What oil wars?”

“In my opinion, we went into Iraq to get control of the oil.”

“In 2003, you mean.”

“Yes, the World War II generation who knew the cruel and messy realities of war, have aged out. So, we got into that mess.”

“What about the nukes that nobody could find?”

“What about them?”

“Anyway, Steve, let’s pose our Fauxmont Militia with some interesting dogs.”

“Belgian Malinois and Dobermans are good military breeds.”

“And German shepherds.”

“Yes, in front of the old barn behind Mrs. Rutherford’s Pie Shop.”

“Steve, wasn’t that pulled down?”

“You’re right, remember? That’s why Artie Bliemisch had to move.”

Ossi has jumped into the damp shade of the roadside ditch, to investigate the culvert going under Diddlie’s driveway. He barks into the pipe’s darkness. Steve pulls him back. 

“Three leaves!”

“What about them, Fred?”

“Ossi just brushed past that poison ivy.”

Fred points it out, flourishing in the shade of some overhanging Japanese honeysuckle, higher up the incline.

“It usually wears off his fur if he keeps going.”  He brushes his sleeve across his sweating face.
 “As I keep going, I find myself living more and more in the past, Fred!”

“Seventeenth Century Haarlem, in fact!”

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184. Racketeer

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Phone in hand, Dimbleby Moreaboutcha is looking out over the river from the bench along Wicket Street. Where it follows the top of the escarpment.  He sits on an empty plastic bag in the damp morning sun.  Looks like rain is still falling in Maryland across the Potomac.

I walk over to him with folded umbrella.

“Good morning Dimble!”

I ask him about the festive meal we all enjoyed at The Emperor Babur restaurant the previous weekend.

“It brought back memories.”

“Did the meal compare favorably?”

“No, he came to me while I was shaving this morning.”

“What?”

“The meal was fine. I am overloaded with associations.”

He belches.

“Someone to accompany your mirror image?”

“Yeah, I was focused on the right side of my chin, in fact.”

“You are clean-shaven, I see.”

“My razor irritated a small wart which marks the spot where Alonzo Ganes slugged me back in the nineties.”

“Ouch! What provoked him?”

Dimbleby holds up his phone.

“This thing is going to go off any minute.  Excuse me in advance.  I am going to answer it and walk away.”

“Yeah, okay, I will stick with the view here.”

“I wrote a story about him.”

“I guess you’re not the first reporter to suffer retribution!”

“Far from it.  We had just enjoyed good North Indian Tandoor.”

“So, he didn’t attack you over the table.”

“No, Alonzo got mad as we were climbing the stairs and it happened in the Hadron Parking lot.”

“From The Emperor Babur’s stairs?”

“No, it was called, The Star of India at that time.”

“Well, the steep stairs aren’t your fault!”

“No, you want to sit down?  This thing is drying off.”

“Sure.”

We share the bench and the view across the river and watch a tour boat cruise past with empty outdoor seats.

“It wasn’t the stairs.”

“No, were you badly hurt?”

“His fist only grazed me, but it chipped a couple of teeth.”

“Did you throw a punch?”

“No, no, I resorted to verbal retaliation and drove away.”

“Good man!”

“Alonzo was drunk and didn’t have a car.”

“We all got well lubricated last week as far as I can remember.”

“Rosey Pelicans were flocking to our table.”

“Even though the bird is extinct!”

“It wings through my thoughts alright.  Who was that artist woman I was sitting next to.”

“That was Daisey Briscoe.”

“Yeah, I had designs.”

“Did you?  Daisey teaches drawing at PU.”

“Yeah, she mentioned her students a couple of times, but I was distracted by Hermione.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“She is my wife. Well, she was, ah strictly speaking, ah ah.”

“Okay.”

“Guilt, soaked in Indian beer didn’t do much for my sleep.”

“But aren’t you separated?”

“By the Appalachians, the great plains, and the Rockies and then some.”

“She still dwells in you, though.”

“She weighs on me.”

“Perhaps a fling would unburden you?”

“She and Alonzo were pretty tight.”

“Sounds like a tense situation.”

“No, far from it.  We were all comfortable together.”

“How did she react to the attack?”

“This was before we met.”

Dimble’s ring tones sound.  He taps his screen and is a little unsteady getting up. 

He taps the screen again and sits down.  The SnazE plastic bag falls from his butt where it stuck for the moments he was using his phone.

“Yeah, Alonzo is an art historian at PU.”

“Art historian and pugilist!”

“I never knew him to sock anyone else.”

“Was it the Rosey Pelicans?”

“Alcohol has never brought it out in him before.”

“Did you mention Alonzo to Daisy?”

“She didn’t know him.”

“No, she is a studio teacher.”

“So, what are you doing up here so early, Fred?”

“My morning routine walk, meet, and talk to the neighbors.”

“What for?”

“I am interested in what people think.”

“There’s a lot of mindlessness out there.”

“Even people who speak in clichés, are moved by something.”

“What’s your job?”

“Full-time retirement.”

“Retired from what?”

“The government bureaucracy.”

“Oh, that quagmire!”

“Good benefits though.”

“Yeah, at my expense!”

“I pay taxes too, you know.”

“Yeah, it’s Congress, I mean it is decaying like an old molar.”

His phone rings again and he tries to get up but staggers back onto the bench.

“Hello, hello, who is this?” 

“Okay Jim, why are you calling me?”

He taps the phone and mutters his annoyance inaudibly.  We sit in silence. A brown squirrel runs in front of us chased by another up a small tree.

“Well, look at that, a sourwood tree!”

“I didn’t know what it was.”

“Fred, it’s the first one I’ve seen around here.”

“It may be the only one I have ever seen.”

“There’s a lot of them down in Tennessee.  It is hardwood, good and useful.”

“So, Dimble, tell me, what did you write about that art historian?”

“Yeah, what indeed? Do you know Diddlie Drates?  I think she lives around here.”

“Yes, I know her well.  She is only a few blocks away.”

“Okay.”

“I can introduce you if you like.”

“Ah, not right now.”

Dimble’s phone beeps.  He reads a text and responds briefly.

“Yeah, ah, okay, I am not ready for a meeting.”

“She lives at the top of Oval Street at 1667.”

“Right, ah, there is history here, you know.”

“Oh! am I hearing an Alonzo connection?”

“I finished off the Saki before leaving this morning.”

“Liquid breakfast!”

“Yeah.”

“Do you do news shows on BBC, or what?”

“I haven’t worked for them for a while.”

“Why did you leave?

“They, claim to have fired me.  I say I quit to finish a novel.”

“So, both things happened.”

“I was getting intimate regularly with the Saki.”

“I get it.”

Dimble looks at his phone, but it is silent.

“My novel is what got me in trouble with Alonzo.”

“You mean the same one you are working on now.”

“Different, with a little help from Saki.”

“Japanese help!”

“No, British.”

“But they, rather the Scots, make whiskey.”

“I am talking about Munroe.”

“As in Hector Hugh?”

“Well, the Japanese have been helping me lately.  You see, they got between me and Hermoine.”

“Sorry to hear that, Dimble.”

“Well, there’s other stuff too, of course.”

“Sure.”

“And you know, Alonzo thought my novel was about him.”

“Did he read it?”

“He read a draft.  Not even half of it.”

Dimble is feeling in his pockets.

“And was unhappy.”

“Well, the protagonist is an Art Historian.”

“What period?”

He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, looks at it, and scrunches back in.

“Seventeenth Century Dutch. Fabritius, Ter Borch, van Ruisdael, and Cornelia de Rijck, especially, de Rijk.”

“I don’t know de Rijk.”

“No, she painted birds.”

“Overshadowed in art history, by Rembrandt and Vermeer and so on.”

“Yeah, those guys are in the highest price range, so in our commercial culture, they are most valuable.”

“Don’t you think there are other grounds for the valuation?”

Dimble belches again coughs and spits.

“Excuse me; No, in a word.”

“You mean price, is it?”

“Well, there’s the museum racket and the prestige stakes, influential critics, and so on.”

“Yes, that is part of pricing, but what about the works themselves?”

“That is a sore subject.”

“Does that mean, no comment?”

“It means that is why Alonzo socked me and chipped my tooth.”

He shows his upper front teeth, exhibiting a chipped corner.

“That?”

“Yeah, I told him, I wrote that all these valuations are bullshit, and he took it personally.”

“Oh! You accused him of being a Racketeer!”

“I did not!”

“No.”

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183. Emergence

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Bel Vionnet lets the leash sag, as the sour smell of fresh spread mulch doesn’t distract Ossian from the subtleties, he finds on a dead poke weed stalk. 

“I always let him get a thorough sniff.”

“Good idea, enrich his mind!”

A lawn service truck and trailer rattles past.

Ossian pulls on his leash veering into the street, leaving his fascination with the pokeweed for the adventure of the chase.  

“He always attacks those trailers.”

“Imagine the scent trail streaming behind!”

“Yes, all the grass cuttings stuck in the machinery and whatever else was chopped up.”

We walk on, along Wicket Street, and left up Oval Street hill.

Tall Maynard Keyes stands by his long pink station wagon, parked at the top, outside Diddlie’s house.

Occasional gusts carry late pink cherry blossom into his graying windblown hair.  Moving the leash to her left hand, Bel points up the hill.

“Look at that huge pink Buick!”

“It must be Maynard’s.”

“Isn’t he Boyd’s friend?”

“Yes, I wonder what he is doing here.  I don’t think he knows Diddlie.”

We walk up to the driveway. Lark comes out of the carport chatting with Diddlie, who is carrying Mr. Liddell.  Diddlie beckons to us, in front of a deep purple azalea set off by the white dogwood above.

Maynard strolls over to them as we get to the car, to look at the rabbit.

“Fine looking specimen of Oryctolagus cuniculus.”

Diddlie, turns to Maynard. “What? Did you say cunnilingus?”

“No, I was referring to Leporidae, the family of rabbits and hares.”

“We don’t speak Latin here.”

Lark grabs her arm. “Oh! stop, Did!”

Maynard is smiling and reaches out to pet the rabbit with his broad palm.

“This is Mr. Liddell.”

“Delighted! I’m Maynard.” 

Mr. Liddell keeps his ears flat against his back.

“Remember me telling you what a huge help Maynard has been to Boyd and me, Did?”

“Where is Boyd?”

Diddlie has her back to the house as Maynard waves.

“He just came out of your front door.” Maynard steps away to answer his phone.

Boyd now has strawberry blond hair, worn down to his neck, with a little eyeliner. 

Diddlie turns to see him. “Boyd, where have you been?”

“I was talking to the Red Queen in the living room.”

Diddlie presents the rabbit to Boyd. “Must have been a long conversation.”

“Well, that parrot has a big vocabulary and I went to the powder room. Want to be ready to meet everyone.”

Boyd ignores Mr. Liddell as Ossian jumps up with his forepaws on Boyd’s left knee.

“What a cute dog!” 

Bel tightens her grip on the leash. “You look great, Boyd. This is Ossian.”

“Oh! Bel thank you! I haven’t seen you for, I don’t know how long!”

“It has been a couple of years, I think.”

Diddlie walks back to the carport, still chatting with Lark, and puts Mr. Liddell back in his hutch.

“How is your husband, Steve, isn’t it?”

“He is fine, studying Frans Hals.”

“On yeah, what a lively painter! I mean those banquet paintings are so animated!”

”I wouldn’t know, you and Steve should talk.”

“Oh sure, I don’t know when I last saw Steve either.”

“Where are you living now, Boyd?”

Another gust blows his hair over his forehead, and he moves it with a feminine toss of his head.

“Thanks to Maynard I have been staying with the Sorrell sisters over in DC.”

“Okay, that explains the long hiatus.”

“Yeah, I am like their maid, bel, doing the housework.”

“Well, how good of you!”

“Got to earn my keep.”

Lark is calling Boyd from the carport.

“Excuse me bel, I owe Mom more attention than she gets from me.”

Boyd turns back towards the carport pushing back his hair with both hands against the wind.

Maynard offers his hand to bel, after putting his phone back in his pocket.

“Excuse me, I am Maynard, I don’t think we have met.”

“Bel Vionnet, glad to meet a friend of Boyd’s.”

“The Sorrels are old friends of mine, by the way.”

“From student days, perhaps?”

“Well, just after, when I was peripherally involved in a scandalous affair.”

“How interesting!”

“Young Lucinda Sorrel was found out in an affair with her sixty-three-year-old high school drama teacher.”

“Sounds like an enriching experience for them both!”

“I am sure it was, but legally it was statutory rape.”

“What a nightmare!”

“Yes, it was that too, until a legal acquaintance of mine took the case and managed to minimize the damage to both.”

“Maynard! You were a friend indeed!”

“Honestly, I found Lucinda interesting, and her delightful sisters became dear friends, too.”

Boyd is running back to us.

“Sorry, bel, what did you ask?”

“The Sorrells, Boyd, do you know them all?”

“Oh, sure, Lidia, Lucinda, and Ottoline, we all share a huge house in DC”.

Lark and Diddlie catch up from the carport. Diddlie looks up at Maynard.

“You are a high-altitude individual.”

“Sadly, I am earthbound.”

Diddlie steps closer to Boyd, looking into face. “What are you guys talking about so intensely?”

“I am about to explain a scandal. Well, my life’s story, I guess!”

Lark puts her arm across Boyd’s shoulders.

“It is okay, Boyd.”

“So, Diddlie, I’ll tell you that Ottoline Sorrel is the artist who painted Adonis and the three Graces. I mean it is just beautifully done.”

“Like, what style?”

“Adonis is offering himself, fully extended, to them in old master style!”

“How big is it? I mean the painting.”

“It fills a wall upstairs in their house. Maybe four by six feet.”

“My God! Is it an oil painting?”

“Yes, kind of traditional except The Three Graces have blueish cartoon bubbles rising from the cigarettes in their lips.”

Lark claps her hands, laughing. “Cigarettes! No one smoked in those days!”

“That’s the point, Mom. They are making fun of Adonis too.”

“What are they saying?”

“Oh, I forget.”

Diddlie has folded her arms across her chest. “Oh no, are you telling me they are Lesbians?”

“Maybe, or maybe they just think he is a jerk.”

“What about the artist?”

“Ah, what about her, Diddlie?”

“I mean is she, like what gender? You know.”

“Ottoline is nonbinary, honey.”

“Oh, right, the pronoun thing.”

“Gender categories are kind of breaking up.”

“Yeah, I am confused by all the talk.”

“Like global warming, you know, more fluid.”

“I presume the Graces are nudes, right?”

“Just as curvy as Rubens’s or Botticelli’s.”

More cherry petals fill the air around us.

“You sure have learned a lot about art!”

“Of course, Diddlie, hanging out with those three. It’s like a perpetual life class.”

“So, you are their student.”

“Oh, among other things.”

“What things?”

“Like, loving.”

“Are you talking about sex?”

“Ah, I could be.” 

“Well, make up your mind.”

“No, sweety, I am asking you to make up yours.”

“Boyd, in my experience love and sex merge and diverge.”

“Inevitably?”

“No!”

“Well, you can have love without sex and you can sex without love.”

“Love can wear off though.”

Bel watches a helicopter overhead while restraining Ossian as he barks at a hysterically high pitch.

Boyd watches Ossian’s strenuous barking. “Your dog objects to helicopters!”

“No, Boyd, there must be a fox! Anyone see it?”

“Bel, I am sure he saw it run off when that thing went over.”

“Right, I wanted to point out before we were deafened, that love doesn’t wear off.”

Diddlie ignores the dog. “Okay bel, passion, attraction, interest, all that does.”

Bel looks up from Ossian who has bumped her leg to get her attention back.

“I agree with you there, Diddlie.”

Lark is shivering. “This wind is cold. Let’s go in the carport.”

“Oh Mom, you are such a delicate flower!”

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182. Macadamia Moves In

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Rank Majors and Kemp, Rombout stand behind the old location of the Elegant Ostrich. Kemp with his AR 15 and Rank has an AK47 slung on his shoulder.The sun’s early warmth brought out cherry blossom spreading deep green shade on the grass and ivy around them.

“Spring started in early March this year.”

“Can’t come too early for me, Fred.”

“What happened to the CAP?

“What’s that, Fred?”

“The Cyber Anthropic Principle.”

“It served its purpose.”

“Which was?”

“It gave this store a name.”

“What about the art?”

“I don’t know much about it.”

“So, what is it now?” 

“Mac is moving his local campaign office here.”

“You mean today?”

“Right.”

Kemp holds up his weapon.

“We are security, Fred, me and Rank.”

“I get it.”

“So, are you expecting trucks and stuff to pull up?”

Kemp consults his phone and reads a text.

They have been stuck on Rout One for the last half hour. Now they are ten minutes away.”

“Yeah, I heard a lot of sirens about an hour ago.”

“It’s all the illegals.”

“What is?”

“The crime wave.”

“There is no crime wave, as far as I know.”

Rank hands me his phone with an article posted on the screen.

Gordon Byron’s byline, “Crimewave crashes out of Mexico, splashing our country with criminals from all over the world.

“That is news to me.”

“Sure, the whole thing is being suppressed by the deep state.”

“They have kept it all from me, that is for sure.”

Rank steps over to speak in a confidential tone.

“Don’t worry buddy.  By next week, this whole storefront is going to be posting the real news, twenty-four-seven.”

“Like down at the Hadron Shopping Center.”

“Same technology but different newsfeed.”

“What will the difference be?”

“Our operation here will tune in to the Fauxmont Community.”

“There’s not many Macadamia supporters around here.”

“We are going to change that.  Bring them a whole new reality!”

A white Isuzu NPR HD box truck pulls up by the door with three blasts of the horn. Kemp walks over to greet the driver. The driver and her help dismount. 

Rank doesn’t move but looks up and down the alley between the back of the row of stores and the playing fields beyond the ivy and cherry trees.

“I want to be sure there’s no interference.”

“There isn’t much danger back here is there?”

“Fred, there’s homeless everywhere.”

“They are only looking for shelter and I have never seen a tent back here.”

“You never know who you are really up against, there’s gangsters, dopers, and thieves all mixed together.”

“Gangsters?”

“Sure, you ever heard of MS 13?”

 “La Mara Salvatrucha”

“What does that mean?”

“Something to do with the FMLN.  ‘La Mara’ is a street and when they disbanded some of them started up as a street gang for self-protection.”

“How do you know so much about it, Fred?”

“Probably read an article somewhere.”

“Like where?”

“Most likely the Post.”

“You mean the Washington Post? That’s all, fake news, Fred.”

“I think a good deal of it is for real.”

“For reality come to us! Our alternative facts are way better!”

“Well, anyway, I doubt if the gang will be here.”

“It pays to be ready, Fred.”

“Yes, but are you ready for the right thing?”

“We have pretty good data on Fauxmont residents.”

“Who is, ‘we’?”

“You know, our campaign.”

“I get it. So, what does it tell you?”

“It’s all worked up into algorithms so we can keep adding to the effectiveness of our messaging.”

“You think you will get through with all that hate speech in our community?”

“This will be different.”

Albrecht opens the gray double metal doors of the store, from inside.  The driver lowers the lift in the back of the truck and wheels two office chairs, draped with plastic, into the building.

“Hey, Fred!”

“Albrecht! I hear you are moving in.”

“Yeah, you want to volunteer?”

“No thanks, I support the other side.”

“Come on Fred!  Get with the winners. Join the Fauxmont Militia!”

“Not my thing Albrecht.”

He beckons and I walk over to the open doors, and he takes me up to the front.  Two vans are parked outside, and technicians are mounting screens to fill the display windows.

“This is going to be a high-class operation!”

“Sounds good for the neighborhood.”

“We have Gordon Byron making an appearance here next Saturday.”

“Oh yes, after his speech at PU.”

“Yeah, I heard him speak last year.”

“Really, I have never been to one of his events.”

“He says it’s all about associations, Fred.”

“It is?”

“Yeah, and he is an expert at making convincing associations.”

“You mean your data tell you what kind of associations people in Fauxmont make?”

“Now you are getting it.”

“Perhaps so!”

“They have digital profiles on millions and millions of voters.”

“Sounds like the ‘Surveillance State’.”

“No, no, no, this isn’t the government, this a privately held company.”

“Corporate Surveillance then.”

“Hey, more data make for higher profits.”

“I still think there is something wrong with it.”

“Gordon says, ‘It’s all about power and belief’.”

“Sure, belief moves voters.”

“So, we cast doubt on the other side’s beliefs by promoting our alternatives.” 

“Albrecht, hardly anyone in Fauxmont believes them.”

“That’s okay, it’s like our law suites. We keep losing but they keep us in the news every day.”

“So true!”

“Okay, Fred, If I say, ‘gender’, what comes to mind?”

“Pronouns.”

“There you are. What do you use, him or her, or them?”

“Well, other people know me as him.”

“So, do you think gender is fixed at birth or can be changed by grooming?”

“I agree with bel Vionnet, people should be whatever they feel themselves to be.”

“Okay, some people think it is fixed male or female. Gordon Byron has said, ‘Any change threatens the moral foundations of our identity’.”

“What do you think, Albrecht?”

”I think it’s a doozy of an issue for our campaign.”

“You keep quoting Byron, what about Grant Gazberg?”

“He died you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“We need a live person, and that person is now Gordon!”

“Okay, so knowing what associations people make lets you know how to, ‘push their buttons’!”

“Right! Keep them focused and following our leader.”

“Sounds kind of mindless to me.”

“Not mindless, according to Byron it is emotional and intuitive.”

“What does Macadamia want to do with this power?”

“Well, Gordan says we must, ‘Avenge the humiliation suffered by so many Americans.

“Vengeance huh?”

“We just want people feeling it!”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Here’s another one. If I say, ‘taxes’ what comes to mind?”

“Mid-April.”

“Okay, some people think of the deep state, or government giveaways of their hard-earned money.”

“The IRS has plenty of enemies.”

“We are going to defund them out of existence!”

“And what will the government do for money?”

“Byron has said, “Smaller government doesn’t need much money and there are better ways of getting revenue than income taxes.”

We move back from the front as they are wheeling in workstation panels for assembly.

The door to the basement stairs is locked even though the interior is being rebuilt.

“I remember a lot of tech equipment down there for the CAP.”

“The what?”

“The Cyber Anthropic Principle that’s what Chuck Newsome was investing in.”

“That area is strictly off limits.”

“You mean the space or the idea?”

“I don’t know anything about the CAP, but the basement area is only accessible to those with a pass.”

“I see, can I get one?”

“Have you got computer science expertise?”

“I want to see if all that equipment for CAP is still there.”

“Yeah, but, like, do you have a degree in computer science?”

“No.”

“You also have to apply the Company annex at PU.”

“Not the campaign?

“No, the tech company has an annex on the PU campus.”

 “What company?”

“Well, at PU, it’s called, The Middlesex Project.”

“Okay, aren’t they part of Fibonacci Corporation, where Rank Majors works?”

“You better ask Rank that one.”

We are back at the loading area.  Kemp is chatting with the Isuzu driver and her assistant who has her high school hoodie on. A lock of red hair falls from the front of the hood as she works on her phone.

“You still don’t have an automatic, do you?”

“No, Rank, but I do have a couple of old revolvers.”

“Are you carrying?”

“No, they are in the linen closet, at home.”

“Your wife will find them!”

“She knows they are in there.  Keeps them dry.”

“How much ammo do you have?”

“Not a round.”

“Buddy, you better get online and find some bullets for those old pistols.”

Albrecht steps forward onto the lift, raises it, and disappears into the truck.  The driver walks over to the cab in pink SnazE ‘Sports Walkers’ with yellow laces and turns to get her clipboard. She has a holster against the small of her back on a black web belt . Her red hair is combed back and bunched. Held with a comb.

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181. Reality

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Albrecht’s black Hummer stands out above the sedans in the parking lot outside the H-bar, with large red, white, and blue stickers, back and front and on each side, “MIGHTY MAC 4 24.”

Lou’s 2004, Hyundai Elantra is parked in the next row.  It has been sideswiped.  The mirror on the right side is hanging off the door by a shred of metal and long scrapes stripe the faded Gold Savor Hazelnut Metallic paintwork from front to back. 

I find Lou sitting on the banquet by the wall with Albrecht on a chair opposite.  Out of the cold glare of the winter sun coming in through the bow window.

They have two, pint glasses of beer and a glass of water on the small round table in front of them.

“How, are you doing, Fred?  Glad to see you.”

Albrecht’s weapon is out of sight.

“Albrecht, Lou, sorry to be late.”

Lou moves one of the beers in front of me.

“When did you get sideswiped, Lou?”

“Yesterday, I came out of the SnazE Gold Emporium and there it was.”

“Hit and run huh?”

Lou looks at his phone.

“Yeah, got to get to the body shop by two.”

“What happened to you? Did YouTube get you again?”

“No, this time it was a dispute with my credit card company.”

“Here come our burgers.”

“Thanks, Lou.”

We pick up our glasses and the waiter carefully positions our three plates in the small space.  The edges of the plates overhang our laps precipitously.  

Albrecht raises his glass of water.

“Here’s to Mac in 24.”

Lou takes a long swig of his Spatenbrau, newly on tap at the H-bar.

“May he lose gracefully!”

“No way Lou.  We aren’t going to have another election stolen from us this time.”

“Albrecht, you know as well as I do the vote was clean.”

Lou takes a bite out of his burger.

“As long as enough voters believe it, the steel is as good as real!”

“Election campaigns have kind of lifted off from reality.”

“Reality is whatever we make it, Fred.”

“No, deluding people is not making reality.”

“Mac just tells his people what they want to hear.”

“True enough, a little nativism, and racism here, some antisemitism there, and fearmongering about the borders, and so on.”

“Sure, that brings in the support!”

“As Diddlie said, it’s about popularity, not policy!”

Lou squeezes ketchup on his fries from the red tomato-shaped dispenser our waiter just brought him.

“That’s entertainment!”

He holds up the red plastic tomato bottle.

“Ketchup anyone?”

Albrecht takes the ketchup and decorates his fries with a well-controlled spiraling red line.

“There is no room on the table for this thing!”

The couple next to us get up to leave.  The woman with purple hair flashes us a smile as she zips up her yellow leather jacket gathered at the waist with a black belt.  Her companion’s long black beard masks any sentiment.

Albrecht puts the ketchup on the now vacant table next to us, still piled with plates.

Lou is looking down at his fries.

“Elections have been entertainment ever since they were first televised.”

“Remember Mr. McLuhan’s dictum: ‘The medium is the message’.”

“Yeah, Fred, haven’t heard much about that guy lately.”

“I think we are living with a good many of his predictions.”

“Macadamia is a brilliant entertainer, and he has mastered the medium.”

“Did you ever watch his show, ‘Mac’s Medley’ on Friday nights?”

Lou is picking at his pile of fries with reddened fingers.

“I remember seeing him insulting his guests to great applause, and never tuned in again.”

Albrecht sips his water.

“I remember him at the Republican convention, years ago.”

“You mean 2016?”

“That’s it. He told the delegates they didn’t need a platform.”

“That’s when I tuned out.”

“Lou, you should have stayed with us, all we needed was his Twitter account!”

“That is where things changed!”

“Fred, the elite liberal media have lost their dominance.”

“Too true!”

Lou has finished his burger in a ravenous hurry.

“Now we live in PR-Land, where people respond to persuasion rather than reason.”

“Come on Lou, when did voters and shoppers ever respond to reason?”

“Well, up until politics became a PR game.”

“Lou, I am sorry, but you are in Liberal La-La-Land!”

“I sing my song and you sing yours.”

“Which is?

“You are singing Larry Winter’s economic myth of the rational agent.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Winters is quoted as saying; ‘I have always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted‘.”

“Yeah, we export our stuff where the fewest people will be poisoned!”

“Isn’t there something wrong with that?”

“Well, is it better, that millions of us die or a few of them die?”

“Albrecht, the us and them thing misses the point.”

“Hey, the point is life and death, and life ain’t fair.”

Lou has taken off his glasses to polish them with his napkin. His unruly eyebrows are trimmed and seem out of place.  Albrecht takes swigs more water.

“Winners will always come out better off and that is who we need most, winners!”

“Albrecht, survival of the fittest is all very well, but we can do better!”

“Maybe Fred, just show me a way that isn’t devolution into Socialism.”

“Economics can’t be separated from morality, Albrecht.”

“That’s just philosophy, Fred.”

“Well, it is still regarded as a progressive notion.”

“They have always been separated and have to be.”

“We are developing technological alternatives to those polluting the world now.”

“You ever see a philosopher in a commercial?”

Lou has put his glasses on again.

“Sure, Plato’s Potato Chips!”

“Wrong Plato, Lou.”

“Plato’s Potato Chips, they used to sell them in my hometown.”

“If you say so, Lou!”

“I do, Plato Castorius made them in the back of his store, on Academy Avenue, right opposite my high school.”

“Okay Lou, I am with you there.”

“Albrecht, we are surrounded by influencers.”

Lou holds up a reddened fry.

“Why are so many of us, ‘influenced’?”

“Think about it, Lou. TV commercials have been influencing America for generations.”

“Yeah, I saw those screens down at the Hadron Shopping Center.”

“Great, aren’t they? Mounted on the roofs of the arcade, twenty feet wide, pumping it out 24/7!”

“Where’s sound?”

“Tune in to 13o5 kHz, on your AM dial or find us online at, ‘Freedom’s Home’.”

“It is an ugly intrusion on my shopping experience!”

“Sorry Lou, ah, when did you get so interested in that concept?”

“Right then and there.  I never thought I would remember Muzac so fondly!”

“It’s, Dreamscape Media, now, Lou.”

“What happened to good old Muzac?”

“We own them now!”

“We?”

“NAE, New American Enterprises.”

“Oh really!”

“Yeah, Private Equity, and highly profitable, my friend.”

“Are you invested, Albrecht?”

“I am paid for my political work in shares, and they keep on going up and up.” 

“Well, I haven’t heard much good about that outfit.”

“You wouldn’t Lou.  You are tuned in to the wrong channel.”

“What is your work, Albrecht?”

“Right now, I am coordinating publicity and events around here for ‘Mighty Mac’.”

“Like those things at the Hadron center?”

“Oh yeah, Lou, my contacts down there were useful.”

“Albrecht, how, do we know if Mac is real?”

“He is there, isn’t he, Fred? Making appearances.”

“Something like him is there.”

“What do mean Fred?”

“I mean we may be seeing a deep fake!”

“No, he appeared in person, a few days ago, at his rally in South Carolina.”

“Yeah, at SnazE Super Stadium, but the sound was coming out of speakers.”

“It always does Fred.  It’s called amplification.”

“It may also be called a deep fake.”

“You can call it what you like.”

“Look, Mac made his first fortune in Russia in the 1920s. Then he had that TV show on NBC in the early 2000s.  He must be way over a hundred if he is still around.”

“He is one powerful dude!”

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180. Meandering with Ossian

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Deep purple clouds crowd low on the horizon, long and narrow like fuzzy blimps maneuvering to dock before sunset, behind the bare trees.

“Who are those two up there?”

I am walking up Oval Street hill from Wicket Street, with Steve Strether and Ossian.

“That’s Sophie on the right with her quarterstaff.”

“Her what?”

“That pole, she calls it her quarterstaff.”

“Oh, like Friar Tuck!”

“She claims to be a skilled and experienced user.”

“That must be Osiris Tarantula in the silvery metallic, puffer jacket.”

Ossian pulls hard to catch up. He gets distracted and stops to bark at a bird shadow, which leads Sophie to turn and look. 

“Hallow there!”

They have stopped on the steep slope. The road is clear but there is snow along the side. Ossian is in the ditch. His short legs sink into loose leaves under the snow as he scrambles to get at the white oak where squirrels chase each other up and down the trunk’s gray bark.

Steve pulls on Ossie’s leash and he looks back toward Sophie but turns and comes to Steve.

“Hi there, Sophie!”

We catch them up and Sophie introduces Osiris. Steve has trouble with his right foot.

Ossi has the bottom of Steve’s jeans in his teeth and then he embraces the top of his shoes, from behind, with his forepaws.

“He has tackled me!”

Osiris watches carefully.

“Is this a new skill?”

“He does this around the house if I walk around too far outside his agenda.”

“What is his agenda?”

“Often hard to say.”

“Does he want to go out?”

“He always wants to go out!

“So that’s it then.”

“No Osiris, he may want my attention for other reasons, such as making breakfast or retrieving something that is out of reach under the couch.”

“I get it!”

“Has he been watching a lot of football?”

“He doesn’t take much notice of TV.”

“From a human perspective, I would say, so much the better.”

“You must like some shows?”

“I don’t have a TV.

 “You are the only one I have met who doesn’t,”

“Oh, I believe it.”

“Don’t you feel out of touch?”

“Out of touch with what?”

“With what is going on, with news and entertainment.”

“It is our primary distractor, that, and FaceBook.”

“Oh, you are on Facebook then.”

“I was when it first came out but soon dropped it.”

Ossi has let go of Steve’s shoe and the bottom of his jeans.

“There is too much pathetic attention seeking and of course torrents of lies and nonsense.”

“Yes, I can’t imagine using their news feed.”

“No, people get uncritically engaged by these media.”

“Those who do are subject to every kind of chicanery.”

“Oh yes, it is as if they are whispering to a lover, unaware that the world is listening under their pillow.”

“A lot of the Jan 6th people found each other through FB.”

“It’s manly for older types. The young are on, Instagram and other media.”

 “What about keeping up with friends out of town or overseas?”

“Email is an ideal alternative.”

There is always Oanon, you know!”

“True Sophie, but you don’t have enough subscribers yet.” 

Sophie steps forward to pet Ossi.

Ossi tries to climb Sophie’s black corduroys. His nose has reached up under her long woolen navy-blue cape. Her silky yellow scarf has eluded him, though the ends reach the ground as she bends over.

She gathers her scarf.

“No, I have a small but select following.”

“You might call it a coterie!”

“You might use any number of names, Osiris but I prefer Oanon.”

“Well okay, if you want influence, you must find something outrageous to say.”

“Osiris, I am not about to go there.”

“That is the way to get attention, dear.”

“Yes, back to that again!”

We stroll on in silence as crows fly up towards the dead oak opposite Diddlie’s place. Ossi walks alongside Steve as we all continue up the hill. Osiris pulls up her hood against the cold breeze higher up.

“Art is better served by painting than TV.”

“TV is art, collaborative art, like movies.”

“Oh! So true Steve, there are so many arts served by TV.”

“So, Osiris, what’s your point?”

“My point is that persuasive art, PR for instance, has dominated TV ever since the beginning.”

“It has been a successful marketing technology.”

“Those ads are a great way to pay for content, free to the audience!”

“The content is generally irrelevant.”

“What do you mean? That’s why people turn it on!”

“Most of the money is in the advertising.”

“What about huge successes like the ‘Tonight Show’?”

“They have to be sensitive to their sponsors.”

“I think you are missing the important social influence of entertainment.”

“Sophie, what do you think?”

“I think clouds of meaning evaporate from TV shows, and we all inhale it.”

“Clouds? Sophie, you have lost me, again.”

“Commercial clouds support emotional dramas, action, and violence so much it fills the vapors.

“I would say money drives production, but attention drives content.”

‘You can say that, yes, attention is the main thing. It is hugely complicated. As complicated as a cloud of cigarette smoke dispersing in a production meeting.”

Ossi is pulling ahead of us, growling.

“Sophie, did you know my ancestor and namesake painted portraits.”

“Of course I do.”

Steve gives Ossi another treat. So, he stopped in front of us. Osiris 

 observes him.

“What a hungry little dog!”

“If he ever turns down a treat, we shall call the vet.”

Ossi finishes up and moves on a shorter length of leash, pulling hard.

“Well, my ancestor had a similar passion, but it was for painting.”

“Was this an American artist?”

“She worked in sixteenth-century Italy.”

“Oh, a Renaissance woman!”

“Yes, one of a growing number now getting recognition by historians.”

Steve holds Ossian back. He stands on his hind legs, supported by his harness looking up at Osiris.

“My ancestor saw with her eyes, Sophie sees with her heart.”

Ossian gets back on four paws.

“Do you mean discerns perhaps, Osiris?”

“Perhaps; the heart has been called, ‘the organ of spiritual perception’.”

“Who said that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“But that organ is a pump, a double pump in fact!”

“Oh, Steve! You are Steve, right?”

“Yup, here in Fauxmont, at least.”

“And your friend…”

Osiris looks over at me. Sophie interrupts.

“Osiris dear, that is Fred. He and Steve are both friends of mine and neighbors.”

“I am glad to meet you both. Let me explain to you, a little physiology.”

We have stopped outside Diddlie’s place at the top of the hill. 

Ossi, squats and Steve picks up after him with an old Washington Post bag. Now Ossi barks at three crows pecking something stringy on Diddlie’s driveway.

“Ah Steve, please, can you calm your little dog?”

He gives Ossi, another treat for his silence.

“Thank you, such a cute little guy!”

“He is still a pup.”

“So, Steve and Fred, did you know the ‘pump’ has about forty thousand neurons in it?”

“No, so it’s got a brain of its own!”

“Physiologically, neurons translate electrical signals into a chemical, called a neurotransmitter, to cross the synapses or gaps between them.” 

“Yes Osiris, I hope you guys notice the alternation between chemical and electrical?”

“Ah maybe, Sophie.”

“Steve, it is the mind-body thing. Chemical body and electrical mind.”

“You mean dualism.”

“No, cascading electrical/chemical interactions.”

“Are you saying we are dualistic or not?”

“I think both work together to make one thing, a sensation or a heartbeat or whatever.”

“An experience huh?”

“Right.”

“Are we talking about the organ or the metaphor?”

“A perceptive question Fred!”

Sophie loosens her long scarf to hang around her neck in several yellow coils.

“Yes! You see, heart, being, soul, mind, spirit: they are words with clouds of meaning.”

“Are you talking about metaphorical meanings?”

“You might say that.”

“Being is the only verb, I notice.”

“That’s how we use it, but they are all verbs, you know.”

“But not usually used that way.”

No, the verb “to heart” is hard to conjugate!”

“There is always: ’heartening’.”

“That is; to raise our spirits.”

“So that tells us something about spirits.”

“It does Fred, I will tell you that spirits are evoked in us. They do not dwell in trees or

cobwebs or in vapors.”

“You think spirits are in us, ‘not out there’.

“People think that spirits live outside themselves because, the movement is so strong, in certain places at certain times.”

Ossian has settled between Steve and me, still looking over at Diddlie’s driveway.  

“It is all a matter of association. That is what Oanon’s Orange Cat is all about, association.”

“Well, Sophie, most people have positive associations with cats.”

“Look at all the cat videos online, Fred!

“I was reading Oliver’s latest post last week Sophie, and he could just as well be talking about politics!”

“Oh yes Fred, the media are full of mystical and intuitive movements.”

“I don’t know what you two are talking about.”

“Steve I am talking about the difference, between objectivity which looks outward, and subjectivity which looks inward.”

“You sound like a philosopher Osiris.”

“I have a degree from Wagner College, in mysticism and  philosophy.”

The sun is down below the tree line. Ossi is barking and frantically trying to chase a squirrel within the restraint of his harness.

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179. Purple Toadstool

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Diddlie’s black hoody is pulled down across her forehead keeping out the damp wind.

“It was 29 degrees yesterday when I went out in the morning, to bundle up this goldenrod.”

“Yup, now we have wet wind.”

“I know. It’s at least forty.”

She picks up a bundle of dried goldenrod and carries it into the carport.

“Bring that other bundle, okay?”

I pick up the bundle lying under a tarp at the top of the driveway and push through the dead leaves blown up against the porch.

“You need to clear your leaves.”

“I called Mr. Fawkes about it yesterday.”

“Has he got a blower?”

“No, he rakes, and it takes forever!”

We leave the bundles standing upright in an empty trash can.

“Not quite, besides the gas-powered blowers release pollutants into the air.”

“Yeah, I can smell it.”

All conversation stops as the yard service at Max’s starts a leaf blower next door. Now another starts at a higher pitch.

The drought in August and September left the grass brown and cracks spread across patches of bare clay soil.

The blowers move around the corner of the house and the angry-insect buzz fades.

“Even the electric ones still blow dust, soil, and mold into the air.”

“Yeah, Fungus!”

“What do you mean, fungus?”

“It’s all over the truth!”

“You are not making any sense!”

“Fred, now you know what it is like!”

“Like what?”

“Like talking to you!”

She pulls on my arm and leads me further into the carport.

We pass Mr. Liddell’s hutch. 

He doesn’t stir. She opens the old wardrobe with the back cut out and finds a narrow steel door in the wall behind.

 “What happened to that beautiful polished wooden door?”

“I gave it to Lou in exchange for some work he did for me.”

I step through the wardrobe to the hidden door.

“Come on Fred! What are you afraid of?”

“The unknown!”

“Well, so you should be, but come on in.”

Diddlie gallops down the dark steep, cement stairs and flips a switch at the bottom. The stairwell is filled with dim orange light.

“Okay, honey, can you see now?”

We shout in the stairwell.

“Yes, Did. Why the lurid orange light?”

“It doesn’t attract bugs.”

“Good idea!”

“It is also LED. Serge says they are more efficient.”

I go down slowly to find her under brighter orange LEDs in the old bomb shelter .

“It is so quiet down here!”

“Yeah, you can hear your own brain buzz.”

She turns towards a small shelf.

“Here put on this mask.”

Latex gloves cover her fingers holding a mask.

“Why? Have you got COVID down here?”

 “No, can’t you smell it?”

“Well, it smells kind of like those rotting leaves up in the yard.”

“That is the fungus odor.”

“You remember, these cubbies?”

“Ahh, it is all Greek, right?”

“Well, that was the Queenie, speaking out of turn.”

“Where is Queenie?”

“I left her upstairs this time.”

“Okay.”

Diddlie gestures toward the wall of cubbies.

“Here is absolute truth, there’s hard truth, difficult truth, here, and embarrassing truth behind that yellow Chinese curtain.”

She reaches into one of the cubies and pulls out something like powdery paper.

“What is it?”

“It is one of my hard truths.”

“Why has it turned purple? Looks like it has disintegrated!”

“See, all the relative truths in those hanging baskets?”

“Yeah, they are filling the place.”

“Oh, look at all those alternative facts!”

The floor underneath the baskets is covered in crumbly lumps.

“Where did that come from?”

“They fall out of the relative truths.”

“Oh.”

“Now I’ll have to sweep all that up.”

“What about the embarrassing truths?’

“Oh, they are fine.”

“Now look at this!”

She pulls out a small object shaped like a toadstool, with a purple cap and yellow gills.

“This is the fungus I was talking about.”

“So that is eating up your files!”

“You got it, sweety.”

She snuggles up next to me and whispers through her mask.

“Aren’t you going to console me with a kiss?”

She has pulled her mask down.

I bend down to her and she pulls my mask aside. She embraces me forcefully. She is passionate. We separate our lips.

“See how good it feels to get out of your head?”

“Yes, you nearly pulled my tongue from its roots.”

My mask has fallen around my neck. Diddlie pulls her’s back up.

“Are you okay Fred?”

“Oh yeah, fine.”

“Pretty good first kiss, huh Fred!”

“A first, it was!”

“It has taken more than a decade!”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Is that what you were afraid of?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, you mean my kiss was, like, too intense for you?”

“No, kissing was not on my mind.”

She pulls on my hand.

“Well, why aren’t I surprised?”

“You tell me!”

“Does your temperature ever get over 98.6?”

“The flue tends to do that.”

“No silly! I am talking metaphorically.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t!”

“Oh?”

“Because if could only see, you would kiss me again.”

“Okay, you are talking erotic temperature!”

“See that nice soft couch over there?”

“I do. You want to sit down?”

“Now you are getting it.”

We step over to the couch and sit down raising a cloud of fungus spores from the cushions.

We are both choking, despite our masks.

“HELLOW! Anybody home?”

Diddlie whispers to me.

“Who the hell could that be?”

“Sounds like Lark to me.”

“Shhh, keep quiet.”

We both choke.

“Maybe she will go away.”

The soles of her shoes scrap on the gritty steps.

“Did. are you down here?”

She has reached the bottom step and crunches some alternative facts on the floor.

Lark looks in.

“Oh! Am I interrupting something?”

Diddlie chokes,

YES!”

 Lark starts coughing too as she walks through the dusty orange air toward us.

“Well, let’s make it a threesome!”

Lark sits down next to me and raises another fungus-cloud.

We all cough together in a random pattern of straining lungs.

Diddlie chokes out to Lark that masks are by the door.

Choking, Lark gets up to find one.

“Okay, we better let the dust settle.”

We sit together breathing gently through our masks.

“Did., where have you been?”

“Home.”

“You don’t answer the phone or your door.”

Lark stops to adjust her mask.

“Oh, you weren’t kidding, was she Fred?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fred, I mean you two have been busy with each other, right? Romantically, I mean.”

“No, I only stopped by about twenty minutes ago.”

Well, Did. What’s going on?”

“I have an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“Fungus!”

“Lark, she means her files are rotting away due to fungus.”

“What files?”

“No one is supposed to know.”

“Come on Did. Let it out!”

“It’s my truth files.”

“Well, I have an emergency too, it is called Armond Macadamia, and its fake.”

“That guy must be a hundred by now!”

“It doesn’t matter, Did. They are running an electronic replica.”

“Yeah, sounds like the fungus has infected the electronics.”

“What fungus?”

“It is what we are all choking on!”

“I don’t know about that, but we have a reality crisis going on.”

“That isn’t going to fool anybody for long.”

“Oh yes, it is.”

“The thing is going to have to appear and do rallies and all that.”

“It already has.”

“No way.”

“That’s it. No one believes it isn’t really him, but it isn’t.”

 “I still don’t think it will work.”

“Oh! it could. They have made a breakthrough at PU.”

“Never heard about it.”

“No, because Macadamia’s money has funded it with billions of dollars over the past two or three years.”

“How is this thing going to shake hands and hold babies?”

“Somebody wears an electronic suit just like Mac’s.”

“You mean he is forcing them to keep all this under wraps?”

“Something like that.”

“It even smells of Mac’s Snaz “Testostronica” aftershave, his favorite.

“That stuff supposedly costs a thousand dollars a bottle.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be an aphrodisiac?”

“Don’t say they can do an electronic fuck!”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“So how do you know about it?”

“Remember Did., when the Elegant Ostrich closed?”

“Sure, there was all that about an electronic art project there.”

“That’s right, the Cyber Anthropic Interface. That was a cover story for the Macadamia thing.”

“You said it was at PU.”

“They used the old store as an offsite for secrecy.”

“Okay Lark, you still haven’t explained how you know any of this is true.”

“I have been talking to someone who worked on it.”

“Oh sure, how do you know this person is legit?”

“I used to see her when she worked at the Ostrich site.”

“Ah ha, and she is going to tell you, a journalist, all about it!”.

“That’s right. Her name will not be revealed, and she will get a lot of money when the story breaks.”

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178. Oak Leaf

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

It is dusk. I am sitting next to bel by a dogwood, with her overgrown smoke tree behind me in the newly fenced-in portion of their front yard. Gusts of wind blow dying oak leaves off their branches as five crows fly past and the leaves tumble, carried in the wind, and fall like drunken birds.

Bell is watching the sky.

“There go the evening crows.”

“They look purposeful, silently heading over the trees instead of landing in them.”

We sit in old and stained plastic Adirondack chairs. They used to be available at Snaz Super Stores for under twenty dollars. The bright blue, yellow and green, is muted by a layer of brown, an accumulation of spring tree sap, and jet exhaust.

We watch Ossian race around the yellowing mock oranges in pursuit of Leo, only a little bigger, who is visiting from next door.

Steve comes out the back door and sits down in the green chair next to bel.

“Look, that’s seven more, following those I saw from the kitchen window.”

An airliner passes over on its approach to Calvin Coolidge National Airport. Landing gear not yet visible as it descends gradually, well above the crows.  

“Fred, we often see crows flying towards the river about now.”

“I think they are going to roost, bel.”

“There’s security in numbers.”

Ossian has come to see Steve. His red leash is still attached. Panting, he puts his forepaws on Steve’s knees.

“You have trained him well, Steve.”

He hands me a small cube of dehydrated liver. Another gust brings more brown and grey leaves flying over us in the wind.

“Offer him this.”

Ossian moves off and jumps on my lap and I give him the treat. He tries to lick my face.

Bel points to the ground.

“Down, Ossi.”

He jumps down and Leo trots over and Ossi tries to nip his dangling ears.

 As the dogs run off, we watch the brilliant glow of the sun low behind the tree line, every twig and branch silhouetted in a vivid pattern of growth. More oak leaves rock and tumble, floating to the ground and some lodge in the hollies along the fence.

Steve points up towards the East.

“See the geese?”

“Yeah, must be about a dozen in that echelon.”

“There’s a lot of activity in the heavens tonight!”

“And no mosquitos, Fred.”

“No, I haven’t heard any crickets either.”

“They were subdued by those frosts last week.”

Steve finds a white oak leaf sliding off his shoulder where it landed after a long trip over the power lines from the huge tree across the street.

“Look, God has sent me a gift!”

He holds up the leaf by its petiole or stalk, turning it slowly.

It is light mottled reddish brown on one side, slightly curved with deep sinuses.

“How about that structure, Fred!”

“Yes, a fine specimen.”

He turns it so I can see the flat gray side.

“See those veins growing up from the stalk?”

“Yeah, like a diagram of the tree itself.”

“Yup, a trunk with branches.”

“Nature famously repeats itself wherever it can.”

“Don’t you find it mysterious?”

“I never thought of it that way, Steve.”

Bel holds out her hand.

“Let me see that thing.”

She holds it in one hand tracing the veins with her forefinger.

“It is a mystery to me why there is anything at all!”

“Wasn’t that Leibnitz’s question too?”

Steve watches bel examine the leaf.  “It was, Fred, and he gave God as the only possible answer.”

“So he did, and Spinoza claimed that it is impossible for there ever to have been nothing!”

Another gust brings faint sound of leaf-blowers from up the street.  We pause to watch the dogs.  Bel lets Ossian off-leash to chase Leo unencumbered.

 “I have been told God is love.”

“Well, Fred, he must have loved this perfect undamaged dead leaf.”

“I don’t buy the God is love idea.”

“Well, it is hard to find a concept of God.”

“I would say it is impossible, Fred!”

“So, what is all the ‘God-talk’ about?”

“Reassurance, hope, and faith, among other things.”

“That sounds about right.”

“A lot depends on how you talk about it.”

“Talk, grammatically, you mean?”

“No, Fred, the vocabulary.”

“As in ‘God is love’?”

“As in any sentence starting with, ‘God is.’.”

“Okay, go on!”

“Fred, ‘God is.’ that is all I can say.”

“That sentence may be grammatical but needs finishing!”

“Well, ah right, I might usually say, ‘I am happy’, or “I am finishing up” or ‘I am stuck in traffic’. See what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“They are all ways of ‘being me’.”

“That is true enough and the ways so many of us are ‘being’ at various times.”

“So, Fred, what about ‘being’ itself’?  

“As in, ‘I am’?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, ask Heidegger that one.”

“You remember his famous line?”

“Can’t say I do. I remember he goes on about, ‘being’, a lot.”

“Our Marty said: “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”

“Oh, he said that did he?”

“Yeah.”

“Where does that get us as far as ‘being’ goes?”

“I guess it takes me back to all the ways of being me that came up before.”

“Okay, we were talking about, ‘talking-about-God’.”

Steve puts his hand on bel’s shoulder. “According to Exodus, God tells Moses, ‘I am that I am’, in the St. James version, anyway.”

“Yeah, in other words, don’t ask for any more info.”

“Exactly, bel, God is. Say any more and you put it in the human condition.”

“Isn’t that the point about Jesus?”

“Oh yes! Jesus was God in the human condition.”

“You said ‘it’ for God, Steve?”

“Right, aside from the gender issue I am not into an anthropomorphic god.”

“Okay Steve, suppose God had a daughter instead of a son?”

“That brings up the gender issue and is still an anthropomorphism, Fred.”

Steve raises his hand from bel’s shoulder in a gesture for emphasis. “Christian tradition has God the Father, firmly in place.”

“Oh, I know, but find it misleading.”

“Aren’t Christians supposed to think of him that way, bel?”

Steve throws another stick for barking Leo and Ossi to chase.

“Well, it does make God accessible, or understandable.”

“Yeah, Fred, especially if you get along well with Dad!”

“And if you don’t, best think again!”

“The thing is, ‘being’ itself isn’t understandable.”

“What? Don’t we all know the verb to be, bel?”

“Sure, that’s just grammar. I mean being is experienced, not only an idea in mind.”

Steve throws another stick he breaks off a small fallen branch under the hydrangea next to him. “Now hear this: ’ peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’.”

“Isn’t that Philippians?”

“I forget, Fred, but it seems to me to be talking about an experience, not an idea.”

“Bel, would you have it that God and being have that in common.”

“Well, sort of, Fred. We must be careful of concepts!”

Another gust rattles in the oaks and more leaves fly up into the evening light and settle as the air stills again.

“Bel, where’s my leaf?”

The leaf has blown off the arm of bel’s chair.

“My perfect leaf, where is it?”

Another gust rattles earthbound dry leaves around us.

“It has joined the throng skittering across our lawn.”

Steve offers Ossian another treat, as he gallops in soft crunchy strides through the throng to his chair. Then Leo comes too.

“Bel has a Buddhist approach to this.”

“I hear that, Steve.” 

The sky has darkened above us, but a glow still fills the treetops.

“Look at all those crows!”

“That’s over a dozen, Fred.”

“All still heading the same way.”

Bel looks up from a leaf that fell on her lap.

“Let’s not forget Jung, in all this!”

“Okay bel, I remember reading that he thought God was the unconscious.”

“That’s it!”

“So, you agree with him?”

“Well, think about what the idea of an all-knowing deity and the idea of the unconscious have in common.”

Steve has both dogs around him, barking. “What was that, bel?”

Steve throws another stick for the dogs to chase.

“I said, think about what ideas of god and the unconscious have in common.”

“Nothing much, I should say. One is a psychological term, and the other is the deity.”

“True, Fred! But they are both unknowable, yet they make themselves known.”

“Yes, the ‘unconscious’ can’t be known by definition!”

Steve taps his wife on the shoulder again. “It has been said that psychology came along to replace a deity for those who found the supernatural was no longer believable.”

“By whom?”

“Ahh, Jung, maybe. I can’t remember, bel.” 

“Well, psychology does offer a new vocabulary to talk about the problems we might discuss with God.”

“You mean prayer, right, bel?”

“If you like, Fred.”

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177. Mythology

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Steve Strether wants to show me a Venetian Renaissance painting called, ‘Feast of the Gods’, at the National Gallery.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1138.html

“What is it about this painting, Steve?”

“I have been reading, Ovid over the years, and this work is derived from his “Feast”.

“Is that Greek or Roman?”

“Roman, ah, wait a minute. They’ve moved it.”

“What’s that Steve?”

“The Feast of the Gods used to hang in this room. It’s been a while since I looked at it.”

I walk on. Artie Bliemisch is unmistakable, walking ahead of me in her black jeans and dark blue sweatshirt with thick curly dark hair spread above it.  

“Here it is, Steve.”

“Oh! Over there, kind of in the hall.”

“Yeah, more people will see it passing by.”

“Passing by is right.” 

The bench I sat on to get a long-relaxed look, is gone.”

“Well, most people don’t spend much time looking.”

“Yes, there is a tendency to read the text and just take a few glances.”

Artie looks up from the ‘The Feast’.

Turning to take a look, she greets us with a circular wave, palm out.

“Well, there they are. All these deities lined up like they are posing for a laugh in the family photo.”

Artie looks over at Steve.

“This is suggestive if not lurid!”

“A lot of leering and leching.”

“It is a bacchanal Steve, I am surprised it hasn’t been banned!”

“They are only banning books, at the moment.”

“If these wannabe censors are so worried about what kids are reading, they ought to check out the internet.”

Artie is looking closely at the figure in a helmet and stays close in. Steve and I stand back to look at the whole picture.

“Look at that huge gold frame.”

“Like part of an altarpiece, Fred.”

Artie is still examining the surface.

“Nice job on that helmet.”

“Who’s that?”

“Fred, that’s Mercury, I think.”

“Yeah, see his caduceus.”

Artie doesn’t turn toward us.

“No, Fred, it is covered by his clothes.”

Steve chuckles at Artie.

“Not his penis, his herald’s staff.”

“Oh! that long thing.”

“Yes, so it is, with entwined snakes and wings at the top?”

“Bacchanal, did you say?”

“Boozing and feasting Artie, they are ancient Roman Gods, wood nymphs and a water nymph and such like.”

A young guy with tattoos swarming up his arm into the right sleeve of his tee-shirt looks over.

“It is out of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Fasti, Book 1.”

“Yes, I’ve been reading it. Do you know anything about that woman on the right?”

“It is Lotis, the naiad, or water nymph.”

“So that’s what a water nymph looks like!”

“I doubt it, Fred.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No.”

“How can you tell?”

“She looks like a human!”

Artie turns to Steve.

“None of them look very god-like to me.”

The man with an inky epidermis comes over to us.

“No, they are dressed as 16th-century Venetians.”

“Oh! just regular folk.”

“No, probably wealthy elite, Artie.”

“Yeah, Steve, I guess your average Venetian was pretty ragged.”

The richly illustrated arm points out the adjacent text.

“The picture was commissioned by the Duke Alfonse D’Este to decorate the alabaster study in his castle at Ferrara.”

Artie has turned back to the painting.

“This is high-class porn, Steve.”

“Well, it is refined Renaissance porn.”

Our informant looks back at us from the wall text.

“He must have been a horney dude!”

Artie looks over to the teacher.

”Well, during the later Renaissance they painted all those naked women and how many men do we see?”

Steve steps forward.

“What about Michael Angelo’s Adam on the Sistine ceiling?”

“And, not so well known, are; Annibale Carracci who did a Bacchus, and Caravaggio showed it all in his cupid.”

”That’s right! The kid has his legs spread!”

 “Adam has his fig leaf in most renderings.”

“Alright, okay, there are some, but not many compared with all those female buttocks, bellies, and breasts!”

“Yes, so is all this porn or not?”

Our new friend steps over to Steve and me.

“We are looking at immortals. Beyond our judgment!”

Artie turns to us again.

”There’s really very little exposed.”

“It is all in their gestures and expressions.”

”Historically, there’s been a lot of prudery, polluting judgment. Has been for some time.”

“Well, those Romans were not prudes, and neither were their gods.”

Steve points toward Lotis.

“Is it porn if the gods do it?”

”If you believe they are gods that’s one thing. If you regard them as human that’s another.”

So the duke enjoyed some titillation while pretending these are just mythological figures.”

“I’ll leave this profound question to you!”

“Are you an Art historian?”

“Yeah, I am a teaching assistant at Prestige U.

“Okay, so tell us some more.”

Famously, you remember, Lotis, over on the far right, fell asleep, wine-drunk. Lusty Priapus, saw an opportunity to take advantage of her. 

He points out Priapus and the sleeping Lotis.

“See him bending forward to lift her skirt? He was betrayed when Silenus’s ass let out a raucous bray. Lotis was startled and pushed Priapus away, and they all laughed at him.”

“Okay, where are Selenus and his donkey?”

“Over there on the left.”

Our teacher steps over to point out the ass standing next to Silenus, a woodland deity.

“This mythological porn, or not, was rendered by three mortals.”

Steve steps over next to Artie for a closer look.

“They were as good as anyone around at the time, right?”

“Giovanni Bellini, the best, started it when he was in his eighties.”

“Good age in at that time!”

”It was his last major work.”

”The old guy did well to reach across this big painting.”

“That grove of trees spread all the way across in Bellini’s original.”

“And Titian did some work on it, right?”

”That’s right, Tiziano Vecelli in Italian.”

“So what did he paint?”

“As you can see, he painted over a lot of Bellini’s trees to put in that hill behind the party.”

”Yeah, he added some waterfalls too.” 

 “Don’t forget Dosso Dossi.”

“Who?”

 “Dosso Dossi made the first alteration, before Titian, in response to the Duke.”

Artie moves back near the teacher.

“Sounds like a square dance call!”

“That’s Dosey doe.”

“Dosso was messing with Giovanni’s masterpiece!”

“What the Duke pays for, the Duke gets.”

“What did that guy paint?”

“Dosso is credited with the landscape at left and added the pheasant and bright green foliage to the tree at upper right.”

“Artie, I thought you would know all about this stuff.”

“Why Fred?”

“Because you are an artist yourself.”

“I am interested in paint and perception not so much the literary stuff.”

Our teacher has moved on joined by his long-sleeved companion. With ink dense on his calves.

“Okay, so what do you see?”

“It is an oil painting on canvas for one thing. Looks like there are three seams. See that one above the figure with a Delft bowl above his head?”

“Okay”

 “Bellini started out using tempera poplar panels.”

“That’s egg tempera?”

“Yeah, mix the yoke with powdered pigment and lay on.”

“As simple as that?”

“No Fred, that’s just the basic idea.”

Artie points out the foreground.

”Take a look at how these pebbles are rendered, look at the values!”

”Yes they are blended patches of color.”

”That’s right, you have to get retinal!”

“What do you mean?”

”Be conscious of what is on your retina don’t recognize objects.”

”Like a pebble, you mean.”

“Like anything you can name.”

“What about that grove of young saplings there, on the right.”

”You are back to nouns, Fred.”

“The sun seems to be low in the sky behind them.”

“Yeah, nice gradation from yellowish to blue above the green hill.”

”You think it is sunrise or sunset, Fred?”

“It can’t be sunrise. They would all be passed out by then.”

“Well, look at the empty cup that has rolled into the foreground.”

“Yes, it could be a sign of growing intoxication.”

“Intoxicated with lust or alcohol?”

“Both I should say.”

Artie moves closer again to take a close look at the surface.

“You guys are looking at the illustration.”

”Well, that is why the painting has a title.”

“Look here, Steve, there is kind of a dent.”

Artie points to a scratch in the surface, in the foliage above the blond woman’s head.

“Yeah, I think it has been restored since I last looked.”

“There’s too much glare from the lights.”

Artie gets out her phone and snaps a picture of the cup in the foreground.

“Look at that detail! Those highlights are like Canaletto!”

“Who is this guy with his hand in the girl’s lap?”

Steve scans the picture.

“Fred, you mean the one with a bowl of fruit in front of him?”

”He must be a Satyr.”

“He must?”

”Yeah, they were famously lusty.”

Artie points out the head.

“Okay, take a careful look at his head.”

“Our teacher is gone!”

”Just look, Fred. You don’t need him.”

”I am looking. It is turned toward the nymph, or whatever.”

“It doesn’t look right.”

“What do you mean, Artie?”

“It is too big and isn’t attached to the neck properly.”

“It must be! It was painted by a great master of the Renaissance!”

Steve is in on this.

“Fred, forget what you know and just trust your eyes.”

Artie is examining the figure.

“Well, it looks to me like a broken doll with a head too big and its fixed back on crooked!”

“Don’t forget, two different artists have meddled with it since Bellini.”

”Fred, can’t you see it?”

“Ah, maybe.”

Steve is examining the bottom right.

“Check the wooden bucket, down here.”

Artie is looking

“There’s a piece of paperer attached to the side.”

“It is Giovanni Bellin’s signature.”

“Dated 1514, how about that, Steve!”

“He is lucky no one took that bucket away over the passing centuries.”

“Or soaked the paper off, dipping it in a stream for a refill!”

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176. Ruins

NOTE:If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Ossian barks at the flashing blue lights and the hideous pitch of sirens. An ambulance has stopped on the opposite side of the road, ahead of us towards the top of Oval Street, near the intersection of Wicket.  Ossian seems unfazed by the occasional lightning and thunder.  It is dusk and dark as night under the post oaks and hickories where I stand with bel across the street from the site of the old Dumpty house. Now the new McMansion is a tower of flame.  Ossian rears up on his hind legs against his harness, trying to get over to the action.

“What started this conflagration?”

“A lightning strike, perhaps, bel?”

“It hasn’t rained for a month.”

“Look at all these fallen leaves!”

Bel moves her foot scattering dry leaf litter on the road.

“It isn’t Fall yet either.”

Thunder vibrates in the humid air.  Smoke rises vertically until it moves off to the left with a current at treetop level where the last of the sun’s illumination picks out the black and gray tones.

“It’s the drought.”

“We might hope for some rain now.”

“We might, that seems kind of muffled.”

Ossian turns and barks into the dark behind us.

Bel tightens her hold on the black plastic handle of Ossian’s retractable leash.

“There’s another dog coming.”

“It’s Diddlie, and that looks like a dachshund.” 

“Hank James must be out of town.”

“Is that his dachshund?”

“Diddlie always takes Maximillian.”

She approaches walking along the roadside in and out of the tree shadow as Max runs in a pattern of his own on and off the road.

“Well, Well, folks, that place didn’t last long.”

She pulls in the leash.  The handle clicks with every new restriction on Max’s freedom. 

“Who lives there Did.?”

A fire truck pulls up blocking our view.  Max and Ossian bark at it while the firemen dismount and unspool hose.

“The Moreaboutchas, Dimbleby and Hermione.”

“I hope they aren’t in there.”

“Probably not, bel.”

“Why?”

“They are busy getting divorced.”

“But they have only been here a year!”

“I know.”

“That place must have cost over a $ million!”

“Oh, sure Fred, $1.2 million.  I looked it up.”

“You think anyone was working from home?”

“Hermione moved out.”

“What about the husband or pets?”

“Hermione took their two ferrets with her.”

Max and Ossian sniff noses and then Ossian puts his paws up on Max’s head.

and he growls.

“How do you know all this Did.?”

“I got to know Dimbleby, a little when I took them a welcome-to-the-neighborhood package.”

“You mean he answered the door.”

“Right, she was gone. I guess he was lonesome or something. So, we talked.”

“Anything memorable?”

“He said their jobs killed their marriage.”

Bel is shaking her head.

“What does he do?”

“He is a TV presenter.”

“No wonder, they probably never had time to relate.”

“What channel is he on?”

“I don’t know, Fred.”

Bel pulls Ossian back close to her feet.

“I have never heard of Dimbleby Moreaboutcha.”

“He works for BBC.”

“What does she do?”

“Hermione used to write for Buzz Feed, but he said she was laid off.”

The dogs are pulling toward the excitement, and we walk up past the fire truck, with Ossian and bel in the lead, to see if the flames are going out.  Hoses stretch down the street and out of sight. More people are gathering. 

“Stand back Folks! Stand back, please!

Bel looks into the glow across the street.

“Who’s that shouting?”

“Sounds like Bill Ruytenburch.”

“He’s got an accent.”

“Yeah, he’s Dutch.”

“Is he a cop?”

“No, Urban Safety Solutions.”

“The Night Watch!”

“They are here day and night, Fred.”

“You mean Jake is still paying them?”

“I guess so.  They aren’t here for free.”

“I thought he went bankrupt!”

Bel laughs.

“It’s a technicality for people in his sphere.”

Bill approaches from the crest of the hill. His orange vest and yellow hard hat reflecting the flickering light of the flames.

“Hi, folks. Keep back please.”

Ossian runs over to him rearing up for attention.

Bill reaches down.

“What’s happening pouch?”

Bel steps away for a better view at the sound of an explosion and the light beyond the fire truck brightens.

“This fire seems immune from the hoses.”

“Yeah, it’s all that oil.”

Diddlie picks up Max to quiet him.  His long body squirms in her arms.  Paws working hard against her hip.

“Yeah, they have, ‘Forever Flowers’ in that yard.”

“That’s right and they grow on oil.”

“What do you mean, Fred?”

“The fake stems grow longer as more oil is pumped into them.”

“What?”

“Yeah, they telescope.”

“I thought it was supposed to be inflammable.”

“Not if it gets hot enough.”

“What kind of plant runs on oil?”

“Plastic ones, bel.”

“Oh okay, I remember now. Plastic may be forever but flowers they are not!”

Diddlie, turns to bel.

“Well, could you call flames a kind of flower?”

Bill pulls out his phone.

What? Hey, I need some help. Cornelissen? No, he’s not here.”

He puts his phone away.

“Yeah, the system uses electric pumps.”

“Okay.”

Bill points towards the beds in front of the porch.

“One of those pumps probably overheated and started it.”

Diddlie puts Max down and his barking subsides into growls. Bel has given Ossian more leash and he growls back and gets pulled away.

Another fire truck approaches from Wicket Street and Bill walks towards it silhouetted against the glow.

We all walk along the verge towards the top of the hill, cutting through a front yard, to get off the road and past a dumpster.

“Look at that Fred!”

“What is that white stuff?”

“I guess it is foam.”

Foam is directed along the ground in front of the house.

“Seems to be working.”

“Yeah, on the ground but look at that gable!”

“Right, all the plastic was planted along there.”

“Planted?”

“Okay Did., buried, I watched some of it going in.”

“When was that?”

“Last year, I think.  I was up here with Max Plank.”

“Oh! I can smell burning plastic now.”

“Yeah, some of that smoke is coming our way.”

“Did Plank build the place?”

“He is retired, I think.”

Diddlie is trying to get something out of Max’s mouth.

Max, open up! open up, Max!”

She tries to get her fingers between his clenched teeth.

He pulls away but she keeps hold of his collar, dropping the handle of his leash.

“Max, don’t you swallow that!”

“What’s he got, Did?”

“I don’t know Fred, but it is crunchy like chicken bone.”

“There wouldn’t be any up here.”

“Oh, no? Those roofers who were filling the dumpster last week, ate chicken for lunch all the time.”

“How do you know?”

“I walked by with Max and he sniffed it out, clamoring!”

The flames in front have died down.

Max wrenches himself free and runs towards Ossian.

“I got him Did.”

Bel has her foot on the trailing leash.

The burning gable collapses partly into the yard and partly into the ruins.

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175. Picnic

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Daisy parks her shiny new car a few spaces away from where I am standing outside, Curd and Grape.

“Hi, Daisy!”

She turns, looking around after closing the door.

“Over here!”

Daisy strides over with a light cotton scarf, trailing yellow.

“Fred, how do you like it?”

She joins me in the shade of the Hadron Shopping Center’s covered walkway.

“That scarf is as long as a wait in this humid heat!”

“Yeah, I got it to cover my head, but it is so light it flies like a flag.”

“I haven’t seen you in your bowler for a while.”

“Yeah, I gave it up for this, to celebrate.”

She gives her scarf a flourish and I notice a blue stripe going the length of one side.

“Is it an important birthday?”

“No, I sold the house.”

“You mean you are moving out of Fauxmont?”

“Well, I did think about it but no, I sold the house on Havisham Place.”

“Must have fetched a few bucks.”

“After giving Cam a share, lawyer’s fees, and the realtor, I had enough to fix up the car and my home in Fauxmont and get out of debt.”

“Oh, I see now, that’s your old car!” 

“Twenty-three years old and looking youthful!”

“Almost adolescent!”

“Yeah, Cam said I could have bought a used Tesla for the cost of renovation and the paint job.”

“I can imagine, getting parts must have been a problem!”

“It was but I am not into EVs.”

“Why not? No exhaust, no hydrocarbons.”

“Right but think about mining all the rare earths that go into them.”

“Yes, we don’t hear so much about that.”

“Now there’s problems with China, where we get all that stuff.”

“It’s a scramble alright and our grid needs some work too.”

“Right, and we are more dependent on it all the time.”

“We shall have to get generators.”

“And ah, you know, the guy who started Tesla. He behaves like a jerk!”

She gathers her scarf and ties it over her hair leaving plenty to spread across her chest.

“The Ukrainian flag becomes you.”

“Thanks, Fred, my gesture of support.”

A young man with a moustache and shaven head comes out of, Curd and Grape.  Followed by a woman in a purple tank top.

“Oh, Boyd!”

He is talking to the woman behind him.

“Who’s he with, Fred?”

“That is Maynard Keyes and Lucinda Sorrell.”

“Wow, no bra.  She would be fun to draw! and look at that color!”

“Have you got a sketchbook?”

“No, too bad.  That fabric is silky. See how it hides and reveals her contours as she moves!”

Boyd turns toward us and walking over, shouts out to Daisy.

“Hey, woman! Painter lady!”

“Boyd! What have you done to your hair?”

“Air conditioning, babe.”

He embraces her.

“How are you doing Daisy?  This is Maynard and Lucinda.”

“Hi, Daisy, Lucy Sorrell.”

Maynard introduces himself.  He carries a well-filled shopping bag.  Switches hands and bends slightly to greet us from his greater height.

“Hi Fred, are you going to stock up?”

“No, I am on the way to Chez Roget for coffee.”

Lucy nudges Boyd who has just dropped a cookie wrapper.

“How about we all go for coffee, Fred?”

Boyd doesn’t pick up his litter but takes Daisy’s hand instead.

Maynard is looking carefully at Chez Roget

“Coffee with a little something in it perhaps?”

Lucy pushes her thick red hair back from her neck.

“I don’t think they do alcohol.”

Maynard holds out a bottle of wine from his bag.

“Why don’t we go over and sit by the river?”

“It’s kind of hot.”

“It will be fine in the shade, Boyd, with a breeze off the water.”

Lucy starts toward the parking lot.

“Come on Boyd!”

He looks at Daisy.

“Okay?”

“Sure, you okay Fred?”

I follow Lucy into the heat of the Hadron parking lot, looking for Maynard’s big pink station wagon.

Daisy admires its low streamlined fins.

“Maynard, I have a 2000 Ford Taurus Aero Station Wagon.”

Maynard looks back as he puts his key in the driver’s side door handle.

“A shapely tellurian species of Ford isn’t it? Emulating the downs!”

“I don’t know if it is a’ Telereen’ or not.”

Maynard smiles his broad best warmth.

“That’s, tel-lurian, Daisy, meaning of this earth.”

“Oh sure, it is definitely terrestrial, like your Buick but younger.”

We all get into the pink behemoth.  Boyd leads Daisy around the hood to get into the front seat next to Maynard. Lucy gets in behind next to me.

Lucy grabbs Maynard’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Turn up the AC, sweety!”

Maynard fastens his seatbelt and turns up the fan.

“Where’s your seatbelt, Boyd?”

“There’s only two up here and I am in the middle.”

He snuggles up to Maynard who puts his hand down and squeezes Boyd’s thigh and Boyd does the same to Daisy.

She leans away from him.

“Hands off Mr.!” 

“Sorry babe.”

“Boyd, I am not your babe, okay?  That ended quite a while ago.”

“Well, I was so glad to see you, you know.”

“Well, I am glad to see you but none of this gropey stuff, okay?”

“Okay, Okay.”

 Boyd rests his head against Maynard’s arm.

We speed along the Parkway with the AC blowing through Daisy’s scarf.

Lucy slides down in her seat and pushes her hair back with both hands as if to gather it but lets it fall again against the back of the seat. The back of her neck against the cool upholstery.

“Do you live over here in ‘The Dominion’, Fred?”

“I do, in Fauxmont, just up the road.”

“We live in DC.”

“What brought you over here?”

“There was talk of going to Mt Vernon for a picnic.”

“Okay, so where do you live in the ‘Distract of Carumba’.”

“A big old place up near the Cathedral.”

Maynard shouts above the engine and the roar of the revved-up blower.

“We all share the Sorrell’s ramshackle mansion.”

“That’s Boyd and Lucy and you?”

“Yeah, and my sisters, Lidia and Ottoline.”

“Sounds like quite a community!”

“Maynard is extended family.”

“What about me, love?”

“Boyd, you are family too, honey.”

Maynard slows down to turn into a small lot.

“The sisters have discarded various husbands and lovers over the years and come back together.”

“We have!  After Dad died, we were all there for the funeral and then none of us left.”

Several empty picnic tables are distributed along the riverbank under the weight of the humid air. The brown river spreads into the haze which is cooking off.

Boyd is leaning forward to see out the windshield.

“Let’s take that one under the trees!”

Daisy gets out first and then Maynard while Boyd scoots over to follow Daisy.

Lucy rattles the door handle and runs down the window.

“You want to let us out?”

Maynard laughs and reaches in to unlock her door.

“How did you do that?”

“The button requires a magic touch my dearest.”

“I thought you got this antique fixed up!”

Lucy gets out and the door on my side opens without the magic touch.

“So, did I.”

He slams the door shut.

“So, what’s with the locks?”

“Oh, they are in a world of their own!”

“YOU are in a world of your own!”

Maynard blows her a kiss as he reaches for his bag of bread and wine in the back.

We settle at the shady table under a willow oak. Maynard unpacks three bottles of wine with screw tops and two loaves of bread in bags labeled ‘Baguette’.

Boyd reaches for a wine bottle.

“No, take this one, a philter just for you.”

“I don’t want filtered wine, Maynard!”

He squeezes Daisy with his free arm.

“No dear, think of it as a love potion and leave poor Daisy alone.”

Daisy moves to the other side of the table.

Boyd twists off the cap, gulps, burps, and hands the bottle across to Daisy.

“Here lover, drink some of this red love-stuff.”

“It is called a ‘philter’ Boyd, and I gave it to you!”

“Those baguette things look kind of short!”

Maynard picks them both up.

“Lucy, they are made here, where we have no tradition of crusts.”

Maynard tears the bread into portions and hands them around.

“No glasses, no plates, no napkins, okay?”

Boyd picks up the bottle for another gulp of the ‘philter’.

Lucy opens the cap of some Sauvignon Blanc and takes a swig.

“Here Fred are you into ‘Sauvage’?”

“You mean it’s a savage wine?”

“Try it and tell me.”

“It tastes fresh and dry.”

 A humid breeze off the Potomac perturbs Lucy’s hair.  She licks her lips holding my wrist and smiles at me through her newly fallen red curtain.

“You should come visit us in DC.”

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174. Scotch

NOTE:If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events.

The surface of Wicket Street has been ground down to the roadbed in preparation for repaving. The ditches are still running high and overflowing at the intersection of Maxwell Avenue, where broken branches and brush along with a discarded tarp, have blocked the culvert. A large puddle is spreading along the Avenue, and I have to cross well up from the light, to avoid it and get to the H Bar parking lot.
I find Lou sitting in our usual Wednesday lunch booth, having already ordered ahead with the app.
“It couldn’t be any more humid out there if it was raining.”
“That monsoon rain last night has stopped the repaving on Maxwell, Wicket and Oval.
“Did you see all that detritus that washed onto Maxwell Ave.?”
“Yes, I think a lot of Diddlie’s mulch made the trip.”
“She just took out all that ivy.”
“Ivy would have held.”
“She calls it, ‘invasive’ and had Mr. Fawkes take it all out with his Bobcat.”
“She is right. It is English Ivy.
“How did it get all over those elite New England colleges?”
“Ivy is a stealthy invader.”
“I guess it comes with green English credentials from medieval abbeys or Scotish castles!”
Lou hasn’t yet cleaned his glasses on his napkin. The waiter puts down a glass of that famous Belgian Pilsner by Stella Artois, for each of us. Now owned by the Anheuser Busch InBev brewing conglomerate.
“Well, thanks, buddy!”
Lou looks up at the waiter.
“Hey buddy, what’s this all about?”
“Complements of Mr. Hoffmann, seeing as how you have been here every Wednesday with the same order for about ten years!”
“Except for COVID.”
“Right, sir. The thing is we are out of french-fries. Would you like some chips instead?”
“How could you be out of fries?”
“The delivery didn’t get through this morning.”
“Not surprising. Our fries are probably in the Potomac by now.”
The waiter asks again about chips.
“Yeah, sorry buddy, I’ll have a small house salad.”
“You want mango or papaya?’
“Is that part of the house salad?”
“It could be if you want.”
“I thought the salad was just lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and croutons?”
“That’s right sir we have no lettuce only arugula.”
“Is that the bitter stuff?”
“Yeah, it’s okay with cream dressing though.”
“You have croutons, right?”
“Sure, we make our own.”
“Make that two house salads with cream dressing and no fruit.”
The waiter turns away.
“Hoffmann is well connected around here.”
“Is that anything to do with the free beers?”
“He hosts a lot of private meetings among congressmen and business.”
“You mean business or political?”
“Hard to separate the two.”
“Patronage you might say.”
“No, No, campaign contributions.”
“Junkets!”
“Yeah, Macadamia has bought a river in Alaska for entertaining his buddies.”
“Trout fishing?”
“Well, there is a problem with the trout.”
“Like dams?”
“It isn’t clear why the fish stopped coming back a few years ago.”
“Maybe it is all that dirty money!”
“Could it be something to do with logging?”
“Maybe there never were any trout!”
“So what good is it?’
“I hear he has fish dropped in specially for his guests.”
“Okay, is this freebee we are enjoying, anything to do with Prestige U. getting that big government research contract?”
“Not that.”
“You mean you have a source somewhere else?”
“Well, I played a small part in getting certain parties together on another matter.”
“Lubricated with liquor and food of course”
“Right upstairs in the Heisenberg Rooms.”
The waiter returns with salads and burgers.
“Gentlemen, here is your cream dressing on the side.”
He gives us each a small paper portion cup full of cream dressing.
“Thanks, buddy.”
Lou dips his fork in the cream dressing.
“How is it?”
“Garlic, salt, and oregano, or basil maybe?”
He tips it over his salad using his knife to scrape out what he can.
“It turns out Mac owns a bank that’s in trouble.”
“I am sure he will weasel out of it!”
“He has had a lot of experience.”
“What kind of trouble is he in now?”
“Laundering money for Russians, oligarchs, and their like.”
“Is this anything new?”
“Fuzzy Leaks released a document dump. That’s what is new.”
“Naming names, does it?”
“Oh yes, there’s ninety-odd thousand pages which have taken a long time to read and sort.”
“You mean you are in on this?”
“Indirectly through an old contact.”
“Okay, so who got paid off?”
“That’s the question!”
“Well, isn’t the answer in the docs.?
“There is evidence of a huge chain of shell companies.”
“Oh of course, all collected on the beach in the Cayman Islands!”
“In a sense, certain British lawyers, and not only British, have made a good living setting things up for gangster clients.”
“That’s what they call ‘Offshore Finance’ I believe.”
“A nice way to hide your money from the tax man.”

“Yeah, I’m the taxman,
I’ll tax the street
(If you try to sit, sit) I’ll tax your seat
(If you get too cold, cold) I’ll tax the heat
(If you take a walk, walk) I’ll tax your feet
(Taxman)”
“Remember that?”
“How could I forget?”
“That’s when George moved to Switzerland.”
“Right, he wouldn’t have to, now.”
“Why not? The Conservatives haven’t reduced taxes that much.”
“SLPs”
“What?”
“Scottish Limited Partnerships.”
“Something to do with a wee dram or a whisky flight?”
“A wee dram I have enjoyed but never a flight!”
“A flight consists of several small servings of different scotches.”
“Like a sampler?”
“Yes, one that may impair your judgment.”
The waiter stops by to check on us.
“Say buddy, we would like two shots of Glenn Fiddich please.”
“On the rocks sir?”
“This air-conditioned room temperature is fine.”
“Thanks, Lou, an appropriate elixir for this discussion!”
“Bear in mind that a limited company is separate, legally from the owner.”
“Well, well!
“Yes, under Scottish law a Limited Partnership can own assets in its name; borrow money and grant security over those assets and enter into contracts on its own behalf.”
“Seems like self-dealing, nice arrangement.”
“Yeah, I have learned a thing or two.”
“So, what happened?”
“First of all, Macadamia’s Prune Stone Group, the mutual fund family, created PS Holdings, a shell company which held assets for, ‘Fruit for Flies’ among many other things. In 2014 it was used to transfer the assets of SnazE Corporation.”
“You mean the big store franchise?”
“The same.”
“Yes, I remember Axel Ensor bought the company whenever that was.”
“It was May 2016 and that is where the story got interesting.”
“So, you mean it was a tax-free transaction?”
“I am not saying that.”
“No, it is probably the sort of thing best left unsaid.”
Our waiter brings the Glenfiddich on a small tray and from which we each take a glass.
“Here’s to that!”
Lou swigs his malt.
“So, PS Holdings are registered to an address in Rosslyn Virginia, which happens to be an efficiency in one of those new glassy towers over there.”
“An efficiency?”
“Yup”
“Well, who lives there?”
“Hard to say. It was rented to a student at Georgetown U. according to a leaked document from 1998.”
“Okay, so who is the owner?”
“No way of finding out.”
“What about all those documents dripping with data and spilled over the internet?”
“The names of these ‘shells’ hide the true owners.”
“That can’t be legal.”
“Maybe not but so much is collected in fees, I don’t think the laws will be changed in the Caymans, London, New York, or any other financial laundromat.”
“Yeah, I always thought a lot more should have fallen out of the Panama Papers revelations.”
“Don’t you remember Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“He was Iceland’s PM when the Panama scandal revealed his family’s involvement and he had to leave office.”
“Okay, that is one case, but only one.”
“Yes, these offshore organizations keep their secrets and enjoy a useful relationship with their local legislators.”
“So, Mac is in the clear?”
“Not quite. Two names associated with the collateral he put up for the loan to buy his Alaskan river dropped out of their shell.”
“In a Fuzzy Leak?”
“I am sure you remember Newsom and Brazov?”
“Sure, Nikita Sergeyevich and Chuck Newsom.”
“That’s it.
“Niki had plenty to hide and his association with Newsom is now revealed.”
“Didn’t Newsom have to sell his mansion down by the river?”
“That part of the financial iceberg was visible but not the rest, and that is where Mac is implicated.”
“Caught with his cold hands full.”
“That’s what it looks like to me.”

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173. Fish Weed

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events.

I see Albrecht walking towards me, having left his Hummer next door at the Light House Gas Station for servicing. It is a bright cool morning outside the Cavendish Pie Shop, where I sit expecting to meet Diddlie and Sophie before the afternoon heat.
“Fred, how are you doing buddy?”
He hangs his SnazE AR case with five clip storage and non-reflective zip, over the back of a chair and sits down next to me, facing the parking lot and gas station.
“You are carrying some serious protection, I see.”
He puts his new Sig Sauer P365X-Macro Optic Ready Compact Pistol
on the table.
“Oh, and that too!”
“Yeah, don’t want to leave them in the truck.”
“Are you expecting some action?”
“Always Fred, I am always ready for them.”
Albrecht takes off his aviator sunglasses and rubs his left eye.
“Aren’t we a bit exposed, sitting here?”
“We are, but I think I’ll see trouble from here before trouble can get us.”
He puts his glasses back on with a swift motion.
“What kind of trouble do you expect?”
“Well, it could any number of enemies of the people.”
“Who are these enemies?”
“Various weaponized organizations.”
“Really! Where do you hear that?”
“Up until recently, it was Vanity Tucker.”
“Who?”
“Come on Fred, you know Vanity’s channel.”
“Oh, on the ‘Rack and Ruin’ site.”
“That’s it, she got kicked off.”
“Vanity’s commentary is very popular, isn’t it?
“She is one of our best entertainers.”
“Isn’t she one of Armond Macadamia’s big boosters?”
“Sure.”
“So, what is the problem?”
“The whole thing is a mystery.”
“But Vanity is huge!”
“Oh yeah, she’s worth about, sixty million.”
“How could this happen?”
“That’s the question, and what will she do next?”
Albrecht watches a mechanic walk into one of the bays at the Lighthouse.
“You remember when Mac was accused of being at an orgy on the Sardanapalus yacht in Biscayne Bay?”
“Oh yeah, one story had him with naked underage Asian girls and another had it as boys!”
“They are going after Mac on that again, now.”
“Who is?”
“The radical left.”
“A bit late now, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What about the statute of limitations?”
“They can still get a lot of media mileage out of it.”
“Well, so can you!”
“Oh, sure. We are going to win this thing.”
“Was it the Dr. or Mac cavorting with the young nubiles?”
“It was Dr. Sardanapalus who was smeared with those fake pictures.”
“Yes, but I thought Mac was in the company of some porn star.”
“Yeah, that was on Slur.com.”
“Was it? I forget.”
“It was Gordon Byron’s wife, Isabella.”
“What? busting out of that teeny bikini?”
“No, that was someone else.”
“Isabella had no business on the yacht!”
“Well, she and Mac had a thing going.”
“So, Mac tickled her fancy, huh?”
“No Fred, it was a business thing.”
“A transaction where Gordon gets juicy tips.”
“Something like that.”
Hat in hand, Sophie gets out, of a blue Hyundai IONIQ EV sedan. She puts her wide-brim green straw hat back on and walks over, draped in a colorful silken waterfall. The sedan hums and slowly moves across the parking lot to Maxwell Avenue. She waves at me.
“Sorry Fred, Diddlie can’t make it.”
“Okay, Sophie, do you know Albrecht?”
“Oh yes, so good to meet you, Albrecht.”
“You mean we have met already?”
Sophie sits down opposite us, facing the Cavendish.
“No, no, no, I have heard about you and your political activities.”
“Is that right, Sophie?”
“Yes, you are well known, as an activist around here. You must know that.”
“Well, I guess it all depends on who you’ve been talking to.”
“So it does, Albrecht.”
“Okay, Sophie, I hope you’re going to support Mac’s efforts to win in 24.”
“Albrecht, would you mind putting your weapon away?”
He takes his automatic off the table and holsters it under his open blue-tone SnazE Camo windbreaker, with non-reflective zip.
“Thank you, Albrecht. Honestly, I must tell you, I will not be a supporter.”
“Don’t you want to support the ‘Post-Party’ candidate and be a winner?”
“Winner of what?”
“A winner in life!”
“Oh, you are asking a big question.”
“It sure is.”
“You see, Albrecht, I don’t see my life as a competition.”
“Okay, but you want to win the election, don’t you?”
“I will win nothing.”
“No, I mean, be on the winning side, supporting a great America.”
“There are many unrecognized forces at work, these issues are very complicated.”
“That’s true. Mac has the best PR in the world, and he is his own best strategist.”
Sophie pulls a deep purple business card out of a small, beaded purse and hands it across the table to Albrecht. He reads it out loud,
Readings by Sofonisba, The Cremona Building, Alexandria Va.”
“You should come by Albrecht.”
“No Sophie, I don’t buy this stuff.”
“This stuff, as you call it, is hidden from you only by your own mind.”
“Look, our team has millions of loyal fans who want to clean up America.”
“Albrecht, just bring that card with you, and your first reading will be free. No buying involved.”
“Well, I appreciate that. I have a lot going on right now.”
Sophie smiles and sits back to look in the Pie Shop.
“Excuse me, I am going in to get some tea.”
She stands carefully gathering the layers of thin translucent silk that she wears like a saree.
“How do you know her, Fred?”
“Sophie is a neighbor.”
“Here in Fauxmont?”
“Yes, right next door to Lou Waymarsh.”
“When did that happen?”
“While you were away, I think.”
“Have you had a free reading yet, Fred?”
“No, neither free nor paid.”
“Do you believe that stuff?”
“Ah, maybe, in a way.”
“WHAT?”
“She does a lot of good, helping people with things they don’t want to think about directly.”
“Come on Fred, the lines in our hands and the constellations and all that, I mean it’s just nonsense!”
Sophy returns carrying a blue mug steaming with aromatic tea. She puts it in the middle of the table and fans the spicy mix toward Albrecht and me with her hat.
“How do you like it, guys?”
Albrecht breathes in deeply.
“Smells like Chai, Sophie.”
“Yes, it is Chai with a little something I added after I bought it.”
“What would that be, Sophie?”
“It’s a mixture I use at my practice.”
“Okay.”
“It helps one relax.”
“Some kind of drug?”
“No, Fred, just aromatics.”
“While I was away, I visited the folks at “Think Right”, you know, the think tank and website.”
“Sure Albrecht, I remember them promoting Boris Tarantula’s replacement for the Washington Monument.”
“That was years ago. We have grown a lot since then.”
“I know they purvey a lot of nonsense!”
“Fred, it isn’t nonsense, it makes all kinds of sense to our supporters!”
“These people are being misled!”
“Look, it is all about making money and associations.”
“Yeah, getting rich off of bamboozling the public.”
“That’s politics!”
“I think it is also a kind of high-tech rhetoric.”
“You’re not far off, Fred.”
“So, you admit it.”
“We use analytics instead of intuition.”
“I get that.”
“We find out what people are angry about and associate those things with government.”
“But government protects our way of life as well as complicating it.”
“Once the word government is associated with, unfairness and victimization, we have won a voter over to our team.”
Sophie tosses some silk over her left shoulder.
“Yes, Albrecht don’t you think you might have some mistaken associations about my readings?”
“Not at all Sophie.”
“Will you look into my crystal ball with me?”
“I don’t have time, sorry. I have real-world issues to deal with.”
“What could be more real than your own thoughts?”
“Sophie it is the thoughts of voters that concern me.”
“That is a thought of your own!”
“Well, okay, but we need focus groups and research, not psychics.”
“Do you know my website OAnon?”
“No, I haven’t seen that one.”
“Well, next time you have a free moment in your busy schedule, check out my pod casts. Click on, ‘Fish Weed’. The web address is on my card.”
Albrecht lifts his baseball cap with almond and macadamia nut symbols and runs his hand over his buzzcut.
“What’s it about?”
“Our work is radically different, but we have more in common than you might think.”

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172. Cure Mr. Liddell

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Lark Bunlush is walking ahead of me past the Rundstedt’s mansion on Wicket Street. I catch up with her, paused, leaning against pignut hickory. She looks across the river standing in front of the Macadamia estate which affords a good view.

“Hi Lark, not often I find you out early, walking around the neighborhood.”

“No, you never have!”

“Ah, can’t remember seeing you come to think of it.

“I was going to meet Diddlie up here.”

“Why not go by her place, just down the hill?

“She texted; Mr. Liddell is sick.”

“That sounds very bad!”

“It is.”

“Has she taken him to a vet?”

“Dr. Higgs is there now.”

“As early as this?”

“That’s what she said.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“She didn’t say. She was pretty wound up about it.”

”I can imagine.”

“Diddlie, doesn’t keep regular hours.”

“True, I remember her calling me at 3:25 in the morning to confirm a lunch date.”

“Anyway, she told me to drop by later.”

“Poor Mr. Liddell, an extraordinary rabbit.”

“He is Liddell II, you know.”

“I had forgotten. I was thinking of Rabbit I.”

We walk on, into the shade of a sweet gum, where crows have gathered to exchanges call.

“I haven’t done this since Augie went back to Sacramento.”

“Walking around Fauxmont, you mean?”

“Yeah, just walking around without any other purpose.”

We step off the road among trees along the verge. Keeping the river in view between the trunks.

The ground drops off steeply toward the river’s leisurely flow at high tide.

Her jeans have caught on some thorns, by the trunk of an ironwood tree. Wisteria twists with a thick and snake-like reach into the upper branches. 

“This tree doesn’t want to let me go!”

“It is not the tree. It’s the greenbrier.”

Ouch! That stuff is sharp.”

She tramples the periwinkle spreading towards the road.

Mind those blackberry shoots, they’ll scratch you too.”

Lark slowly pulls away from the vine. 

“We are messy animals.”

Lark is free of the vine, and we walk on.

“How is Boyd?”

“He is back with those women in DC, I think.”

“Oh yes, Maynard Keyes’s friends?”

“Yeah, the tall guy with that grotesque pink car.”

“He did help Boyd, though.”

“Seduced him, more like.”

“By the way, have you been keeping up with OAnon?”

“I don’t know it.” 

“You know, Sofonisba’s blog or website, or whatever it is. She moved in next door to Lou Waymarsh.”

“Okay, she is friends with Osiris Tarantula.”

“They are an odd pair, too.”

“I remember now. She started OAnon.”

“Yeah, some kind of feline thing.”

“Well, I thought it was a movement. Haven’t looked at it for months.”

“Sophie’s latest post is difficult, you might say.”

I hand her my phone with the relevant site.

Strange grape for the ape with flees in its sneeze was fruit for thought and ought to be consumed and presumed with digestion and not digression.”

“Could it be a cipher?” 

“Maybe, she is casting a spell, Fred.”

“A curse?”

“Yes, she is messing with Chatgpt?”

“Maybe it will start generating nonsense.”

“It does that already!”

“True enough, ‘Chat’ references a ton of stuff online to generate plausible sentences.”

“Right, the Large Language Model.”

“Oh, so that is what LLM stands for.”

“Oh! I wonder if Chat is large enough to source, OAnon?”

“Maybed OAnon is a chatbot?”

“There’s a thought! Can chatbots talk to each other?”

“What would they have to say?”

“I can’t wait for digressions on digesting grapes with fruity flees!” 

“That will be the day of itchy laughter!”

“And scratchy talk!”

“I am not so worried about the new generative technologies.”

“There is a lot of panic in the media.”

“They are groping for attention.”

“It is basically a plagiarism machine.”

“Plagiarism?”

“Right, just repeating other people’s words.”

“Yeah, somebody called it a, ‘Stochastic parrot’.”

“You might say it sorts words.”

“Yeah, statistics and probability and all that.”

“Well, I guess you could call that thinking.”

“Sure, but not creating.”

“That is what the word, ‘generative’ suggests though.”

“They say it is trained.”

“Perhaps, ‘conditioned’ would be more accurate.”

“Well, it is just a bunch of code.”

“Sure, let’s get away from Anthropomorphism.”

“But that makes for more sensational headlines!”

“Yeah, remember calculators, were going to wipe out our numeracy?”

“Yes, no one would know the multiplication tables.”

“People are still doing arithmetic.”

“They don’t have to make change though.”

“Anything a machine can do better than us relieves us of having to do it.”

“That’s the problem!”

“No, it’s an opportunity to use imagination and be less mechanistic!”

“How many people will be capable of that?”

 “We are going to find out.”

“This could take generations!”

“We have adapted to calculators and PCs, and cell phones, in our lives, why not this?”

“Well, our adaptation has been incomplete.”

“Sure!”

Wicket Street descends away from the river as it turns gradually around the Macadamia estate.

A fox crosses the road ahead and sits down to watch us as casually as a pet dog.

“This is where I wish I had a dog.”

“Yes, they generally run away from dogs.”

“Just one loud bark!”

The fox strolls towards us and goes into Mac’s grounds through a dark gap in the yew hedge. Shrieks of a blue jay are followed by noisy sparrows all emerging from the yew at once. They settle in the scented Japanese honeysuckle smothering some privet.

“That fox got a lot of attention!” 

“And we are poisoning the planet, which also needs more attention.”

“It needs more action!”

“And, fewer promises, or ‘undertakings’ as they are reported.”

“I still think disaster could accompany generative tech.”

“Oh, it will spread misinformation and provocations.”

“Right and people will believe that stuff.”

“After a while, we’ll learn to tell the transformer’s stuff from a person’s.”

“What transformer?”

”Fred, you need to talk to Diddlie.”

”I do, quite often.”

”Well she told me that gtp stands for; ‘generative pre-trained transformer’.”

”I can only make a vague guess about the meaning of that!”

“Well, Did. can tell you more.”

“Whatever it is, it can produce gifts to Macadamia’s campaign!”

“Something else to wind people up.”

“Don’t you find that dangerous?”

“Sure, so is climate change.”

“You know, I was talking to bel and Steve about this, and she said, ‘Think of all the stale repetitious vocabulary we tend to use.’”

“As in online comments?”

“I guess…”

“Seems like ‘Chat’ might just spread cliches.” 

“Bel asked, what is going on when we speak?”

“We voice words!”

“Right but how does a thought get into words?”

“How? We just do it!”

“Exactly, it is hard to say what is going on there.”

“It seems like magic.”

“Yes, something as ineffable as a thought becomes a sound loaded with intention.”

”With meaning.”

”Yeah, and what can a computer mean?”

“Algorithms, that’s all it has.”

“Well, they are intended to do something.”

“Yeah, by a programmer.”

“Right, and they end up reflecting the programmer’s biases.”

“I think we are broaching a huge question.”

A thick fallen branch blocks the road. It broke on impact, crumbling in several places. Lichen covers the bark on the lee side and the wood looks wet and rotten.

“Let’s go around here.”

Lark leads us back on to the verge. Stepping carefully through thick ivy and back onto the curving road.

“There she is!”

Lark waves her arms above her head as if signaling to an approaching rescue mission.

Diddlie is striding up the hill with her head down and hands in her peacoat pockets. She veers across the road toward us.

“How’s Mr.?”

“Higgs says he has dysentery, or something.”

“He is going to be fine, Did.”

”Well, I disagree. Mr. Liddell has other symptoms he seems to be ignoring.”

“He will be fine Did.”

“He better, be!”

They have been talking past each other in an embrace, right ear to left ear. Diddlie moves back.

“Dr. Higgs is doing tests.”

“That will lend weight to his argument!”

“Well, he is expert in his field.”

“Is he the one from the Hadron Animal Hospital?”

“That’s right, at the shopping center Fred. That is where he cures critters.”

A five lined skink flashed blue in the sun as it got out of our shadows and under a piece of broken concrete disturbing a dead oakleaf, to get in.

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171. Muster the Mark!

NOTE:If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

I am standing in the new, ‘Patio Bar’, off the Quark Lounge, at the H Bar. It opened only a week ago. It is a narrow outdoor space with a bar opening from the back wall of the Quark lounge. Six small tables with umbrellas are arranged in a row against a fence draped with wisteria. We can hear a diesel engine on the other side, in the parking lot, and the intervening fence and leaves filter out the fumes. 

They advertise six new drinks called: Strange, Charm, Up, Top, Down, and Bottom. Each is served in a glass of a different color, which match the six umbrellas. 

Frank Vasari leans against the bar with his shaggy black graying hair combed straight back, slipping over his ears. He blinks from cigarette smoke rising less than an inch from his lip. His gut hangs over his belt stretching the buttonholes of his pink shirt. The bottoms of his black jeans gather around his worn loafers.

Daisy sits next to him at the bar half shaded by the awning. The shadow cuts across her left side leaving one sunlit shoulder of her black cotton sweater against her shaded face. 

She looks closely at his glass. One long arm sweeps into the sunlight. Bracelets tumble in the gesture sparkling towards her wrist.

“What are you drinking, Frank?”

“It is called a, ‘Strange’.”

“What have you got Fred?”

“This is called, ‘Up’.”

“Are you getting high?”

“No Daisy, no effect yet.”

“Looks like it has scotch in it.”

“That may be the color of the glass.”

Daisy pushes her bracelets up from her wrist and looks at the house tablet in front of us on the bar and taps in, ‘Up’ under drinks.

“Says here, it is Drambuie, Johnny Walker Red, San Pellegrino water, and a lemon slice.”

Frank blinks through his smoke.

“Isn’t that called, ‘Rusty Nails’?”

The bartender looks up from the glass he is polishing.

“That’s right, ‘Up’, pops in and out of existence with Rusty Nails.”

Frank turns to him.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“No, that was a figurative, ‘pop’.”

He swigs his, Strange.

“Oh, really, a kind of literary dual existence?”

“You got it, sir.”

Daisy holds her schooner up to the sun. The bartender disappears into the back.

“This is called, ‘Charm’.”

“What’s it doing for you?”

“Why Frank, it is adding to my glow!”

“Alcohol can do that!”

“Yes, it can make you sweat on a hot day, but not with charm, Fred.”

The bartender returns with a tray of glasses, and grinns at Daisy.

“Ma’am, you know what’s in that drink?”

“No, I just thought charm couldn’t be bad.”

“Shall I tell you?”

“Sure, spill it!”

“That is amaretto and sherry with a dash of simple syrup, and orange slices.”

“Simple syrup? I mean, what is simple about it?”

“It is sugar dissolved in water.”

Frank lights another Gitane and speaks with his fresh smoke.

“Yeah, my grandmother would have called that a, Sherry Cobbler.”

“She still could sir, a perfectly accurate name.”

“Another case of ‘popping’ and simultaneity, is it?”

“That’s right sir, you are sitting at the outside side service of the Quark Lounge bar.”

“Are you sure its pronounced, ‘Quark’ and not, Kwork?”

“Mr. Gell-Mann insists it is ‘Kwork’.”

“And who is he?”

“He was visiting professor of physics at Prestige U.”

“Aha, a particle guy, huh.”

“The word came to him with some help from Mr. Joyce.”

Frank blasts a long stream of smoke up above his head. It forms a brief thinning cloud up there before dispersing.

“Who is Mr. Joyce?”

“He made a guy called Finnigan famous by writing about his wake.”

Daisy interrupts with a swipe at her a loose lock of hair.

“Like after his death, or what?”

“Could also be what he left in his wake.”

“Oh, right, that book! I remember. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes too many senses.”

The bartender points out a plaque on the wall above his pay station.   Daisy reads aloud:

“Three quarks for Muster Mark!

 Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark

 And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.” 

“So, Fred, what does it mean?”

“I think it is a spell.”

Frank squints through his smoke.

“Mojo, literary mojo, I would say.”

The bartender is putting up the glasses he just brought in. 

“Mr. Hoffmann put that up before we opened.”

“Did he tell you what it means?”

“No Ma’am.”

“Are you telling me these two, Joyce and Gell-Mann, were customers here?”

“Not that I know of sir. We have only been open out here since April 7th.”

A woman walks over from the doorway, holding her drink and sits down under the yellow umbrella. 

She is followed by a man carrying a beer. He wears his head shaven and sunglasses. His red SnazzE Super-Stretch tea shirt reveals his massive upper arms.

“Where’s your lemon, Fred?”

“I took it out.”

Frank has burnt his cigarette down to his lip again and gets up to throw the butt into a red receptacle shaped like a fire extinguisher, with an oval opening in the curving top. 

He walks back to the bar and takes a long draft of his, ‘strange’.

“Nothing strange about it, really.”

“It is the only one served in clear glass.”

“Yup, you can see right through it.”

“That pint should put you away!”

“Daisy, I am imagining it’s vodka.”

“So, what’s in it?”

“Looks like water and tastes like it too.”

“I guess that is a strange thing to drink in a bar!”

“A medical tyrant has told me to stay off the sauce for good.”

“There is a fine selection of herbal alternatives over at, “Legal Drugs”.

“That means getting lost in DC, Daisy.”

“We have a store right here.”

“They can’t sell herb and still be legal in Virginia.”

“Just tap the DC address into your phone’s app.”

“I have never been able to get an app. to work.”

“Why not?”

“Passwords for one thing. 

How the hell am I supposed to remember them?”

“Just use some term like, ‘Damar Varnish’ and stick a number in there.”

“Already used that for my PC.”

“Well, use it again with a different symbol.”

“No, I’ll ask one of my ‘herbalist’ students to help me.”

“Is he a dealer?”

“No, but she has modeled for me at that evening class we did back before Covid knocked out of the Art Center.”

“Yeah, I think I know who you mean.”

“She carries about five bags draped from her neck and shoulders.”

“Yeah, on strings and tapes, and bags in all different patterns.”

“Right, very colorful.”

“She has a nice paisley robe too.”

“It’s a good subject, drawing all those paisleys to describe the folds.”

“One of my students got a nice late Matisse out of that approach.”

“How did the student like it?”

“He wasn’t thrilled.”

“Yeah, a lot of good work goes unseen in the studio class.”

“I know, those unrecognized achievements drive me crazy.”

“How’s your gig at the Art store going?”

“I am losing customers since covid died down.”

“It is all computer stuff, right?”

“Yeah, on Zoom using various design programs, but we draw too.”

“Are you going to teach our Tuesday and Thursday classes this semester?”

“Well sure, but it’s a bit late to start now, isn’t it Frank?”

“We can fix that, if you start next Tuesday.”

Gusting wind blows dust and dead leaves over the fence. The yellow umbrella tips over.

A bright flash fills the sudden deluge, immediately followed by thunder. Daisy is pointing into the trees.

“Look at those branches burning in the rain.”

“It’s become a torch.”

“Those flaming branches are falling in the parking lot.”

“Is your car out there, Frank?”

“No, it’s around the other side, too bad.”

“What?”

“Too bad, that old wreck needs replacing, and a little insurance would help.”

“Good to be under the canvas here.”

A waiter stands by the door,

“Come on in folks, this area is closed.”

The man with huge arms helps his date out from under the fallen umbrella. Her purple SnazzE Milano Silk blouse, balloons in the swirling air.

The bartender pulls down a shutter across the length of his service area.

“Daisy turns around in front of me after getting inside.

“Where are they?”

“Who?”

“Those two sitting under the yellow umbrella, Fred?”

Frank blows a last puff of smoke out of the door before dropping his cigarette, extinguishing it with his next step and following.

“They must have, ‘popped’ out of existence…”  

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170. Evaporation

NOTE:If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

I Find Lou and Diddlie in the Quark Lounge discussing Armond Macadamia’s political ambitions.  She pats the banket beside her without looking up. 

So, I sit next to her.

“See! It’s what happens that exists!”

Lou looks up, polishing his glasses with a paper napkin.

“Hi Fred, put on your philosopher’s hat.”

“The one woven out of propositions?”

“Well, how about the one knitted out of slogans stained with ontology?”

Diddlie waves her hand in the air between us.

“What are you guys talking about?

“Just kidding each other, Did.”

“Well, as I was saying, Armond Macadamia is the candidate to watch for 24.”

“Yeah, I’ll be watching him alright.”

“Lou, I know that look of yours.”

“Sorry Did. But I really wish he would just evaporate!”

“Don’t you get it, Lou?”

“Get what, Diddlie?”

“It’s all entertainment now.”

“What is?”

“Politics, Macadamia is the best entertainer in the running.”

“He is a great distractor. I would agree with that.”

“Right, entertainers distract us from our problems, right Fred?”

Diddlie, turns to me.

“That is part of the job.”

“See, if it is on TV, it is entertainment!”

“and if it is entertaining it is happening.”

“Right Fred, that’s what exists for us all.”

“You mean it is real?”

“Yeah, it really exists. Being entertained is an experience!”

“Where did you get all this?”

“’Rack and Ruin’ It’s a great new website and they do podcasts, too.”

“But Diddlie, I thought you didn’t like tech and all that.”

“I used to hate it. Then Tatiana and Serge turned me into, ‘Tech-woman’.”

“So now you are surfing the web!”

“Oh, I am a champion finder, now.”

“What have you found?”

“Did you know Rack and Ruin bought out, ‘Shrink Rapp’, Lou?”

“No kidding! I haven’t looked at Shrink Rapp since Lark gave it up.”

“Tucker Vanity took over Grant Gazburg’s slot after he died.”

“Diddlie, why do you think people believe this nonsense?

“Vanity doesn’t believe any of it.”

“Yes, but his audience does.”

 “So what? He makes a million a week.”

“Yeah, spreading lies!”

“Who cares? Like I said, that’s entertainment! It makes people feel good.”

Lou puts his round gold-framed glasses back on the bridge of his nose, with a stray eyebrow curling onto the top of the left lens.

The waiter comes by and serves two burgers with fries and one grilled cheese sandwich for Diddlie.

“Wait a minute!”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Sorry, I was talking to these guys.”

The waiter patiently waits.

“Lou, you told me you guys had given up meat.”

“We did.”

She points to our plates with burgers and thin fries piled high like kindling, with a pickle and garnished with a slice of tomato and a tangerine segment arranged on a lettuce leaf.

“So, what is this?

Lou looks at our two plates and pauses.

“I mean, Lou, you have gone back to bad beef with bad consequences for our precious planet.”

“Yup.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“Did. we tried the fake meat once and it didn’t work for us.”

 The waiter bends down to us.

“Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

He goes over to the next booth.

“Yeah, right Fred, and what about our planet’s future?”

“You have a point Did, but Macadamia has no policies and likes beef, so should he win the 24, popularity contest all bets are off for our dear blue planet!”

“Fred, you have been enjoying to too much liberal entertainment!”

“I might say the same to you.”

“Might you?”

“Yeah, all your concern about climate change, which has been called, ‘junk science’ by the entertainer.”

Lou leans forward with a deep frown merging his eyebrows into a fuzzy dark line.

“Don’t tell me you are a Mac supporter.”

“I won’t Lou.”

“Okay then, tell Fred so I can hear.”

“Fred, I am not a Mac supporter I am a reality supporter.”

“What is the difference?”

“Who I vote for.”

Lou leans back and strokes his beard. Lou and I have not had a bite yet, only the allure of aromas.

The waiter returns and fills our silent moments of relief.

“Will that be all?”

“Do you have any passion fruit juice?”

“No ma’am, only apple and orange.”

“Oh, too bad. What about cranberry?’

“No Ma’am, only apple and orange juice.”

“I’ll have some hot tea, please.”

The waiter looks at Lou.

“Another Stella, sir?”

“Sure.”

Diddlie chomps on the pickle beside her grilled cheese.

“We are headed for the most entertaining election yet, in 24!”

“You know Diddlie, most of what Mac says is a mixture of lies and dog whistles.”

“See, it doesn’t matter. 

His audience loves it.”

“Unfortunately, Lou, it is thought that is evaporating.”

“Yeah Fred, drying up like Lake Powell.”

“Guys, he is telling folks what they want to hear.”

“Look at all the free publicity he gets every day!”

“He does have a way of making steamy headlines.”

“He is all over the TV, Fred, that is what counts, not print media.”

“Oh, and what is wrong with newspapers?”

“They are unreal!”

“My newspaper is as real as can be.  Ask Steve Strether’s dog, Ossy, who enjoys shaking it out of the plastic bag, growling at it, and tearing it apart in the driveway.”

“Fred it is just black ink on paper, only the pictures are real, and they can’t compete with TV.”

Lou, who has been feasting steadily, finishes off his burger and swallows his final bit of blissful beefiness.

“Yeah, he knows how to jump on the media merry-go-round.”

“That’s’ right Lou, and he finds all kinds of new ways to get fired up and ready to vote.”

“Well, that’s populism!”

“No Fred, that’s entertainment!”

“Did. this website has given you a new voice!”

“It turned me on to reality.”

Lou drains the last suds of his, Stella.

“I don’t think electing our president is entertainment.”

“Well, politicians are all basically actors, you know.”

“True enough, their appearances have to support their image.”

Lou is looking down at his plate.  He scratches the back of his neck and then looks up poking one of his remaining French fries into his ketchup.

“Diddlie, think about what the election is for, okay?”

“It is to find out who is popular enough to live in the White House.”

“What do you think Mac will do if, God forbid, he turns out to be that popular?”

“Who knows?”

“Don’t you have a problem with that?”

“You can’t argue with reality.”

“Yeah, but elections are also about policy.  Like what will he do?”

“Mac doesn’t do policy.”

“That is my problem with him.  He is a windbag full of gas.”

“Yeah, toxic gas.”

“Oh, come on Fred! You guys don’t get it.”

“Well, I don’t get your point.”

“Fred, policy is boring. It’s like philosophy. It is unreal! you know. Who reads that stuff anyway?”

“Diddlie, I am afraid a whiff of Mac’s gas has carried you away!”

“Sure, has Fred!”

 Diddlie takes a satisfying bite out of her grilled cheese sandwich, which came with olive tapenade, and a Nasturtium flower cradled in the curl of a crisp lettuce leaf, as well as the pickle she has already eaten.

Lou’s second Stella arrives along with Diddlie’s hot tea.

Lou looks up at the waiter.

“Thanks, buddy.”

Diddlie waves the remaining portion of her grilled cheese in thanks as she munches on another mouth full.

After the waiter departs, we sit in silence while Diddlie demolishes her sandwich with crunchy enthusiasm.  She wipes her fingers on a napkin and takes a sip of tea and then pushes her plate aside.

“Guess what guys?”

“What Diddlie?

“Tatiana got a job in New Zeeland.”

“Really, whereabouts?”

“Auckland, Fred, that’s the tech center on North Island.”

“What about Serge?”

“Oh, he is stuck in Fiji, because to the storm.”

“So, she went out first.”

“Yeah, I told them to book a romantic cruise, but they wanted her right away.”

“And Serge?”

“He texted me the other day, saying he is going to freelance.”

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